When We See Ourselves in Others, We Stop Hating
<p><em>I watch the octave of legs run fearlessly toward me, and my gut reaction is to flinch. Something deep within, some primitive part of me, imagines the spider is dangerous. Reason, however, insists that since I’m in England, where most of these creatures are safe to be around, I’ve nothing to worry about.</em></p>
<p><em>I’ve met many people who insist they hate spiders, and maybe it’s because they can’t relate to them. They look so dissimilar to humans, darting about haphazardly and spinning webs to catch their prey, that spider-haters fear them.</em></p>
<p>Fear so often becomes hate, and we tend to fear what (or whoever) we don’t understand.</p>
<p>We never truly know anybody as well as we know ourselves, and even then, perhaps we lack knowledge. As such, we easily slip into a state of tension when we come across anyone alien to us. Their appearance, habits, and beliefs are unfamiliar, and being near them rips us from our comfort zones.</p>
<p>If lucky, because we’ve traveled or been around new people often for other reasons, interlopers might arouse our curiosity. We want to know them better, and our attempts to understand them help us connect. They lose their strangeness, and we lose traces of fear.</p>
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