The Unholy Trinity
Whenever I ask people what their biggest fears are, I always get the same three predictable answers; spiders, snakes, and heights. I have never understood why nearly every person is afraid of these things. Most of the people who are afraid of them have never actually had traumatic experiences where one was involved. They’re like the default fear that just comes pre-programmed into the minds of all people when they’re born. Ironically enough, I am intrigued by all three of these things. Spiders and snakes are both marvels of the animal kingdom, and heights have always given me a strange high.
Spiders have eight legs, which is sweet, and they have eight eyes, which is also sweet! They’re among some of the most intriguing animals on the planet. There is a kind of sinister patience in the way that they hunt their prey. That is, they don’t hunt it at all. Spiders are exponentially smarter than all other insects and it reflects in how they go grocery shopping. They make elaborate snares, from scratch might I add, and just wait for a passing fly to be stupid enough to careen right into it. When it’s time to chow down, they liquefy the insides of their prey and slurp them dry. That’s just cool, I don’t need to explain it! But not all spiders make webs. Some just use camouflage, and others make actual trap doors in the underbrush of the forest and leap out to kill their prey!
Snakes are another story. They possess the same patience that a spider does, but with a little more action involved. I think that the best part of all the different varieties of snake that exist is how varied their killing methods are. Some just need to give their victims a quick nip to paralyze them or to kill them slowly. Other snakes are beefy enough to wrap around their victims, suffocate or crush them to death, and then swallow them whole. Snakes are also the only animal to be canonically cursed by God.
Maybe it’s because I grew up as the shortest kid in my class, so the prospect of being taller than everything always appealed to me. I credit my love of heights to an unexplained love of the feeling of flying, though. I’ve had a lot of dreams where I was just casually flying through a city, a parade, or a mountainside. All of them felt so real, the sensation was unparalleled. So whenever I hike up to an overlook that sensation just hits me like a truck. It’s an overwhelming sense of being overwhelmed by the vastness of the earth but at the same time not being tethered to it. I know that when God creates the new heaven and new earth it’s not going to be anything like I can imagine, but maybe He’ll throw in some wings for us. It’s wishful thinking.