The Itsy Bitsy Spider climbed up the water spout;

Down came the rain and washed the spider out;

Out came the sun and dried up all the rain;

And the Itsy Bitsy Spider climbed up the spout again;

-The Itsy Bitsy Spider

A year ago, a spider would have sent my kids running, despite my professions that they are harmless and just eat the bad bugs. Today, a daddy long legs was spotted in the corner of the play room and all of a sudden it turned into DEFCON 3. Not from me. I was calmly sitting, but the kids were grabbing EVERYTHING. Suddenly the tranquil play time turned into shouts of:

• “This is my blaster”
• “This is my shooter”
• [2 year old puts on Wonder Woman costume] “This will help me”
• “I need this” [grabs random play kitchen pot]

In all the commotion, they don’t notice that the daddy long legs has calmly meandered behind the climbing wall and isn’t in view anymore. This led to an interesting discussion (emphasis added to give an idea on inflection of littler voices):

• Suburban Father – “Guys, why does the spider need to die?”
• Daughter – “Because he is EVIL!”
• SF – “What does that mean?”
• Son – “He’s here to GET us.”
• D – “Yeah… he’s here to GET us.”
• SF – “He’s only here to eat the bad bugs…”
• S – “No… he’s here to GET us.”

This continued for a few minutes with little change to content. No longer are they afraid of a spider, they have been ingrained with the urge to kill (thankfully the urge and the capability are two different things). It doesn’t matter why, it’s the enemy, the other, the thing that is after us. It awakens their imaginations and they are not in the playroom, they are soldiers on the front lines of a Starship Troopers style invasion. They are breaching the Black Gate into Mordor. No matter what hideous thing comes at them, they are READY.

And aren’t we all this way? Sure, we laugh and watch as our kids get worked up over a spider and have their imaginations run wild. But we do this too. We let our imaginations run wild with our own importance, manufacturing a world around us that is different than reality. It manifests itself differently for different people, but it is all over the suburbs. There’s the guy down the street self-medicating his divorce with shiny toys that make it seem like his life isn’t falling apart. There’s the couple in the cul-de-sac up to their eyeballs in credit card debt trying to maintain a lifestyle they think they have. There’s the boss at work who fancies himself as upper management’s savior and always micro-managing people. There’s the person writing this blog that thinks he’s smarter than the other people in the room, so he started a blog.

What’s the answer? For starters, the spider doesn’t need to die. It eats bugs and helps control them, something we can all appreciate. Second, the answer is also not to lose the imagination. It’s a wonderful tool we were built with to create something out of nothing. With no imagination there would be no art, no new technology, and a lot of bland vanilla.

We need to maintain a healthy view of reality to make good decisions hand in hand with the ability to see the world as a child does: in wonder with excitement and potential around every corner. Be truthful in the things that matter, and fun-loving in the things that are trivial.

Cheers,

-SF