Love the Unloved

Imagine a spider dangling by a thread in front of you at eye-level. Her legs tickle the air in search of something to latch onto, and when there is nothing near, she dances down her strand of silk until she finds herself in your outreached hand. At first, you are chilled by her light touch on your index finger, for you grew up believing spiders were something to be feared. But then, at a closer glance, her movements surprise you. She gently lifts just a couple legs at a time in a waving motion to travel from one freckle on your arm to another. Her fangs are hidden against the underside of her body because, although you are unfamiliar to her keen senses, she does not feel threatened by the warm skin on your bones. The sparse hairs from her eight limbs are not as intimidating as once thought before compared to the thin, dense hairs covering your own arms. On her marble-sized back, patterns of golden orange and brown and black resemble an intricate Aztec sun painting, and you are lead to wonder how something so venomous to the blood could appear so stunning to the mind.
At the end of every shimmering string of silk is a creature worthy of admiration and appreciation. Spiders are the smallest mathematicians and the most abstract artists of the animal kingdom. From masterful spinnerets, they decorate every corner of the Earth with perfectly geometrical webs made not only to capture flies, but to captivate the eyes of those who find beauty in transparent masterpieces. After hours of spinning, connecting, and re-perfecting each strand, the eight-legged wonder fits as a symmetrical centerpiece on the home it thoughtfully created. Misty mornings plant beads of dew drops to every silken string, and icy nights freeze the fibers of the web into a crystallized sculpture more enchanting than the average snowflake.
Spiders themselves express art in the unique ways they are vividly designed. The Black Widow is painted with a bright red hourglass to warn that time is precious; it should not be wasted. The Brown Recluse carries a violin on his back as a symbol of the presence of beauty even when standing alone: the volume of ten violins is no louder than the volume of one. The Horned Baboons prove that unicorns still roam the land with their pointed crowns, and the Pink Toe promotes confidence while flaunting fuzzy, pink boots. On the exoskeleton of every spider species lies a hidden aspect of character which alludes from one simple, yet brilliant, external feature.
Unfortunately, not everyone views spiders through the same aesthetic lenses as the art-seekers of society. Negative perceptions form early on when curious children are urged by their parents to step away from the eight-eyed arachnid in their home. The mother lets out a scream as the father slams an old shoe against the wall, and a stain bleeds into the wallpaper as the crippled spider curls up to die a slow and painful death on the carpet. It all happens so quickly that the child never gets the chance to ask why the spider posed as such a threat to the family when all it did was sit silently on the wall, so the immature opinion sticks: spiders are bad; spiders deserve no mercy; spiders are unworthy of love.
The spider species in whole take up a mere fraction of the world’s most misunderstood beings, yet the combined quantities of bugs, insects, and arachnids remain outnumbered by the amount of people who refuse to understand them. Through the eyes of an ignorant man, bees only sting, ants only infest, and crickets only chirp to keep you awake all night. These aspects may be true on occasion, but there is so much more to take into consideration when casting judgments. Go outside and look around. Get up-close and personal with nature’s friends and really look. Notice the soft buzzing of the bumblebee and how it always stays on pitch. Invite just yourself to a picnic in the park and thank the ants for never failing to keep you company. Skip out on the concert you bought tickets to see, and instead be a respectful audience to the symphony of crickets outside your bedroom window. Open your eyes and see the unseen. Open your heart and love the unloved.