Are you afraid of spiders? It’s said that when one conversational door closes, another opens. What if lying behind the door of new opportunity is an eight-foot-tall, hairy trap-door spider ready to paralyze you, then spin you in its web for later consumption? All while it feeds on your friends?
We’re told that networking, branching out, and making new connections are healthy for us, but what if sometimes these conversations can leave us for dead, and without us realizing this until it’s too late? And how can we possibly recover from these experiences with the threat of new poisonous paws around the corner?
If you’re still new to life at Camosun and you’re more familiar with the concept of semi-permanent friends whom you’ve known for years, then reaching out for new ones may seem difficult and even scary, and for good reason—it only takes one-time scorn to feel the burn of betrayal. However, it’s important not to run home to your fluffy friends quite yet.
When eight-legged creepy crawlers wish to feast on you, the power of hindsight with a little human kindness (yes, it’s almost Christmas again…) may allow you to ask yourself this: what is it I am getting out of this? You see, to “use” someone is rather relative. Quite possibly, you are this monstrous creature preying on others, and you just don’t know it yet.
Now you may be thinking, what are you talking about? I am certainly no fly trapper (just in case you are, remember the whole honey-versus-vinegar thing). But what is it that you truly wish to obtain from new friends? And what is it that they wish to gain from you? While attempting to avoid the false dichotomy of individualistic, selfish motives versus collectivist, humanistic, do-no-harm ones, who’s getting caught in whose web?
Often, we wish to find solace in our furry friends as a means of comfort and joy with little risk of betrayal and being hurt, but cowboy movies where the man can roam the countryside with no need for companionship other than his horse aren’t exactly popular anymore, are they? In other words, instead of choosing between an apex spider and a harmless kitten, we must approach new communication with a different mindset.
Trap doors only exist if there’s the possibility of the trap; that is, the notion that something isn’t a trap simultaneously postulates the trap itself. If we expect that there are no spiders ready and willing to capture us, then there is already the idea that there are spiders. There are no windows and doors of opportunity, and there’s certainly no more open countryside.