One day I noticed a large spider web in a corner of the window that overlooks the back yard. Luckily, it was on the outside of the window. With colder weather and fall approaching, spiders have been busy gathering the last mosquitoes, flies, and other winged prey.
There was a fly trapped in the web outside the window. I watched as the spider suddenly appeared from somewhere near the bottom of the web. When he reached the struggling fly, the spider began to rotate it, weaving silk strands around it. When the spider was finished, the fly was wrapped inside a silken cocoon. In all my years of observing life and nature around me, I had never seen a spider wrap a fly. He must have been full and wanted to save the fly for a later meal. It reminded me of Frodo in The Lord of the Rings when a giant spider paralized him and wrapped him in a silk cocoon.
As I watched the spider and examined the spider’s web, I remembered Loren Eisele’s “Unexplained Universe” in which he writes about the lessons of life he learned from observing a spider web one day. As he watched how the spider reacted when he poked a pencil at the web, he realized that man does not exist in the spider’s universe. The only thing that concerned the spider was what kind of meal had become trapped in his web. He realized that like the spider, man is only concerned with those things that happen in his immediate universe.
I began thinking about Eisele’s observations and realized how true they are in my own life. The web of my life stretches out from a central point. Wherever I’m located is the center of that universe, whether it is in my house or somewhere along my travels through life. Wherever I am, is the center of the universe–at least to me. That’s not unlike the area of the web where the spider might be found. Nothing concerns the spider unless it invades the boundaries of its web. Any living creature that becomes entangled in the web will struggle to try and free itself, and the spider can sense the struggle and ventures forth to greet his prey and next meal. An inanimate object, like Loren Eisele’s pencil, will not put up a struggle and the spider will ignore it, knowing it’s not a meal.
I realize, that like the spider, we as humans, are for the most part, only concerned when something happens that will have an impact on us, or those close to us. Wars and famines in other countries are something to think about, and talk about, but the vast majority of people are not directly affected by those events. Therefore, we essentially go about our daily lives as if those events didn’t exist.
People are starving to death all over the world every day, but I eat good and gain weight. Starving people do not exist in my universe. People suffering from diseases like AIDS are not in my universe unless it hits close to home. Until it enters the boundaries of my web, my universe, it has no affect on me.
Drug dealing and gang related activities don’t exist in my universe. Oh, I know they exist somewhere out in the world around me. However, until I, or someone close to me, gets mugged or is robbed by a person looking for drug money, it’s not a part of my immediate universe.
Wars don’t concern people unless they or a loved one are involved. If no one close is involved, the war doesn’t pertain to their universe or web of life.
Unlike the Vietnam War, which had an enormous affect on our family, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have had little, if any, direct affect on my daily life. It doesn’t have as much impact in my universe. If it suddenly touched someone close to me, and they were killed or seriously wounded, then it would become part of my universe.
I look around me at my web of life and realize how small my universe really is. In proportion, it’s not much bigger than the web of that little spider. Not only does a very small part of the universe have a direct affect on my life, but I have very little direct affect on most of the universe. The web of life churns on and on at an increasing rate of speed and I hang onto the threads for dear life, knowing that if I let go, the web could spin away from me in the blink of an eye.
The key to this web of life seems to be learning what affects us and what affect, hopefully positive, we can have on the universe and the people around us. The web for most of us is not very big. Like the spider, we must learn to sense what is important and what is not. Then we can react to those things that we can have some control over, and not worry about those things that we have no control over. That knowledge and understanding would make life a lot less stressful for all of us. We can learn a lot from observing a spider and its web. They have lessons to teach us about life.
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