Itsy Bitsy Spider

I was standing outside this evening, and the sight of an ominous looking yellow spider caught my eye.  Half paralyzed in fear and half in intrigue, I stopped in my tracks and observed the ugly little creature for a few minutes.  I watched the spider spin its web of intricately woven silk, diligently crawling up and down to create its masterpiece.  It seemed like such a menial task and tedious task.  The silk so thin and delicate, that if a person or anything other than an insect was to accidentally pass through it, all the spider’s meticulous and conscientious work would be immediately destroyed. 

As I watched the spider repetitiously pull silk from post to post, I realized that although we usually view spider webs as an annoyance to our likeliness of the outdoors (don’t tell me you don’t go ape shit and flail your arms around like a maniac the moment you feel the slight stickiness of a spider web on you), the patience and painstaking work that a spider puts into its web is in all actuality, quite admirable.  The dull task of weaving silk back and forth, to and fro, while uninspiring on the surface, is in fact the kind of humdrum work required to create the web.  A small act for a much bigger picture.

I (almost) became completely absorbed in the spider’s work and then it dawned on me.  We are all spiders.  Itsy bitsy ones in this vast world, but nonetheless, spiders.  We go through each day having to muster up the enthusiasm and energy to pull our own fragile strings of silk across the many facets that make up our life all the while knowing damn well that at any moment, our hard work may be interrupted or torn down.  Sometimes the days become mundane, tasks lack excitement, and life tastes stale.  What we should remember, as this spider reminded me tonight, is that there is a much bigger picture to all that we do.  The hard work and diligence we exert now will create a masterpiece in the end.  It may not be the masterpiece we envisioned with the first pull of our web, but it's the masterpiece intended for us all along.  So long as we do our part, for our own individual lives and for the greater good of human kind. 

“Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.”  -Howard Zinn