How to Coexist with Fear (and Spiders)

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“If you’re keen to have a look at one other individual’s habits towards you as a mirrored image of their relationship with themselves quite than a press release about your worth as an individual, then you’ll, over time, stop to react in any respect.” ~Yogi Bhajan

Several years in the past, I hiked into the distant forestlands of Bukidnon, a mountainous province within the southern Philippines. I used to be there to make a documentary in regards to the Pulangiyēn folks, an Indigenous group residing within the village of Bendum. No roads led there. No working water. Just a winding path upwards, a slow-moving carabao pulling my digital camera gear, and some kindhearted villagers serving to me climb.

I had include the intention to hear—to look at each day life, file sounds, and study what I may. What I didn’t know was that one in all my deepest classes would come not from the forest or the folks, however from a spider.

A really massive spider. Hairy. Big and spidery.

My lodging was a small, hand-built hut with bamboo partitions and a woven flooring mat. I felt honored to remain there, grateful for the simplicity and peace and the respite from the rains. But my gratitude dimmed a bit of once I seen, down on the ground within the nook of the room, a darkish form—a spider. Motionless. The dimension of my outstretched palm.

I requested one of many locals if it needs to be, properly… eliminated.

They smiled gently. “It lives there,” they mentioned.

That was it. No concern. No plan to catch it in a cup and carry it away. The spider wasn’t an issue. In truth, to intrude may need been seen as disrespectful—not solely to the spider, however to the spirits believed to dwell in all issues, seen and invisible.

So I had a selection: coexist or dwell in worry.

The Challenge of Coexistence

At first, I couldn’t sleep. Every creak of bamboo startled me. I imagined the spider descending on my face in the midst of the evening. But day after day, the spider by no means appeared to maneuver round a lot; at the least I used to be not conscious of any main roaming round by the beast. And slowly, I started to marvel—what precisely was I afraid of?

It wasn’t simply the spider. It was the unknown. The lack of management. The feeling of being susceptible in a spot removed from what I understood.

But right here’s what I discovered: coexistence shouldn’t be about settlement or consolation. It’s about selecting to not reject or destroy what we don’t but perceive. It’s about pausing lengthy sufficient to see whether or not what we worry is actually harmful—or whether or not it’s simply unfamiliar.

That spider turned a mirror.

Fear Isn’t Always a Problem to Solve

Over time, my relationship with the spider shifted. I ended checking the nook obsessively. I nonetheless seen it, however I didn’t react. I ended making an attempt to guard myself from one thing that wasn’t truly threatening me.

In the quiet of these forest nights, I started to consider all the opposite issues I’d tried to keep away from or management in life—conversations, feelings, uncertainties, even my very own sense of failure. The sample was the identical: discomfort would come up, and I’d attempt to evict it.

But this expertise confirmed me a distinct means: you don’t all the time want to resolve the worry. Sometimes, you simply want to take a seat with it. Let it keep within the nook.

And over time, your relationship to the worry modifications. You develop bigger round it.

In the Indigenous worldview of the Lumad folks, coexistence isn’t an summary idea—it’s life. Trees, rivers, stones, animals—all the pieces has a presence, a job, a spirit. You don’t have to love each being you share house with. You simply need to respect it.

This is echoed in lots of traditions. In Buddhism, the follow of metta encourages us to increase loving-kindness not solely to buddies however to enemies, strangers, and even issues that scare us. In fashionable mindfulness follow, we study to look at our expertise with out judgment, to permit ideas and sensations to come back and go.

Even ecology tells us: thriving programs are numerous, and stability will depend on the peaceable presence of all issues—even spiders.

What I Tell My Students Now

I’ve taught filmmaking and storytelling for a few years. My college students typically wrestle with worry—worry of being seen, of not being ok, of creating errors. Before, I attempted to teach them out of it. Now, I educate them to make room for it.

I inform them in regards to the spider.

I inform them in regards to the time I shared a hut with one thing I used to be afraid of—and the way, by coexisting with it, I modified greater than it did. The worry didn’t go away. But it stopped working the present.

So the following time one thing in your life scares you—not as a result of it’s dangerous, however as a result of it’s unfamiliar—see when you can let it keep within the nook a short time longer. Don’t push it away. Don’t choose your self for feeling it. Just breathe.

Let it’s there.

You would possibly uncover, like I did, that peaceable coexistence is feasible—even with the stuff you by no means thought you would settle for.

And when you study that, there’s little or no left to worry.

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