Want to develop emotionally? Get to know your inner spider

We all have a tendency to get caught in an emotional web of our own making. When we recognise and accept that, we can learn to fly

During lockdown, I was sitting on my balcony in the sunshine one morning when I witnessed a brutal killing. I heard a loud, mechanical-sounding buzz behind me and went to investigate. I found a fly caught in a web, buzzing and shaking, fighting to escape. I watched as a spider darted from one side of its prey to the other and back again, using its legs to wrap its silk round and round the fly. At first, the fly seemed to buzz more and more loudly and shake more and more vigorously. The spider, undeterred, efficiently and precisely tightened its prison. I watched in disturbed fascination as the buzzing grew quieter and the movements weaker, until the fly fell still and silent. The spider’s work was done.

This memory resurfaces more often than I would like it to. I think it has stuck so powerfully because I recognise within myself the prey and its predator: the lively emotions that want to fight and fly; and the part that seeks to extinguish them, instinctively, silently and with no mercy.

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Want to develop emotionally? Get to know your inner spider

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