The summer of 2013 was particularly stressful. I believe it took 3 years off my life. However, it also produced a pivotal moment. In one of my early morning stress-reducing walks through the woods, I plowed face first into a spider web.
And flipped out.
I don’t believe anybody saw me, but if they did, they’re probably still laughing.
I was deeply impacted, but not from trauma. After reacting as though I had acid eating through my skin, I suddenly realized that I was basically moving in hyper-speed to swipe a beautifully woven, smooth, silky thread off my skin. Was it because I was stressing out about the web causing some kind of harm? No.
It wasn’t the web.
It was the unknown – the uncertainty…
Where is the spider?
I realized that morning how much of my stress and anxiety stemmed from uncertainty as opposed to the present, tangible, real circumstances that are in my face.
I suddenly realized that most of my anxiety was borne of control issues. I wanted to think through every contingency and know every right counter-move. To have the right words in the chamber and the right answers in my arsenal to a vast number of scenarios that were not remotely likely to occur. I realized that morning in 2013 how much of my stress and anxiety stemmed from uncertainty as opposed to the tangible, real circumstances that were – at that time – presently in my face.
Some smart person wrote that a vast majority of things we worry about never happen. That thought allows me to breathe a little deeper in my contingency planning phase. I am not cured. I am not magically forever fixed in my way of thinking because of my frantic Macarena dance in the woods that morning. Indeed, to this day I still have a job because I think through things that could happen and have a good idea how to respond if they do happen. And I drive my team nuts because I am frequently contingency planning.
But, the silky web of 2013 taught me that there has to be a limit to how hard and fast I flail my hands to clear from my skin a web that likely has no spider in it, indeed, a web that almost certainly houses no spider that can do any significant harm to me. My pest control friends would likely chime in to inform us that only one of the three poisonous spiders in our country actually spins a web that we would be at all likely to walk through.
Regardless, spiders are creepy and nobody wants to be wondering if one is in their hair. So, I also learned to be more forgiving of people who – in my mind – overreact to circumstances that don’t worry me. And, every once in a while, they’ll actually rid the world of a pesky spider.
May we strive to be more calm and graceful when clearing a spider web from our faces knowing it’s not the present-moment web that causes our stress, but the present-moment uncertainty.
Bene-action: Can you identify stressors in your life that are borne of uncertainty? If so, perform a 10 minute risk assessment, considering how likely each event is to occur and the magnitude of realistic injury from it. If there is, indeed a significant risk of occurrence and harm, then focus your efforts on reducing that risk. If not, consider putting that stressor in the back seat of life.
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Common Sensitivity 