The Spider’s Web

By Mozhgan Mahjoob

Sometimes hardships, failures, and heartbreaks can lead us to the most difficult situations in life and we get frustrated. We become sad and disappointed; especially, if we try our best for some of our goals but cannot achieve them.

At such a time we might get fed up and decide to get rid of everything, even ourselves. This happened to me. After some failures in life, I was totally broken. I felt hurt and worried. I thought that my life was meaningless and nothing would work out for me. Everything became boring. Days were repetitive and my usual pleasures—listening to music, going to the mountains or the desert—could not make me feel comfortable. I kept on thinking about my goal that I could not achieve, although I tried my best, and it always kept my mind busy, thinking about it, when I saw a small spider on the wall.

The spider used to spin its narrow webs on the walls and the door, near to each other, in small and big circles. Daily, when I cleaned my room, I removed the webs and sometimes there were insects inside them, but since I was cleaning my room I just removed them all.

Again, the next day, it weaved threads from its abdomen. Sometimes the spider fell down then it pulled up itself using the threads. I was wondering why doesn’t the spider get tired or quit, knowing that I remove all its threads from the walls? The spider knew that sometimes its webs will fall down, even if they survived the wind and cleaning. And no one might want it inside the room, yet it was busy working hard both day and night on its webs.

I asked myself, what is the logic behind this? Is this just a trap for the insects? Is it a spider’s nest? The spider’s interest? Or, maybe something else that I did not know. The patterns that the spider weaved with its threads were different shapes—no one could do that. They were always pre-arranged and well organized.

What really inspired me was the spider itself. The spider knew about the risks, about the inevitable failure. That it might not be able to have a permanent web in my room. It knew that it might fall down because its webs were not much stronger, it still tried and produced its webs from one wall to the other, even at the top of the door. The spider never stopped trying, and it was never disappointed when I tore down its webs because the spider was the architect of its life.

21 December, 2022