The biggest spider I’ve ever seen is living in my window. She’s stuck. Her eight legs grip tight to the screen and the glass window, sandwiched in the breezeway created between the two panels. And I wonder how she got there, and if she’ll ever get out.
She eats, I’ve seen it happen. She catches tiny gnats as they perch on the screen, resting from their annoying bustling, and drags them through the holes and devours them. She gets water, I’ve seen her drink. As rain drops pelt the window, she hides behind her web and drinks the water that collect on the windowsill.
She has, it may seem, all she needs in life. But tonight, I’m sitting on my floor facing the window and staring at her (only because I feel protected by the glass that separates us, spiders creep me out) and I wonder if having what you need in life is enough to be happy.
My parents used to preach to me the difference between having what you need and getting what you want. This practical application usually came in the aisles of toy and later clothing stores or when picking out my first car or skipping out on a Spring Break vacation with my friends.
“You need food in your stomach, clothes on your body and a bed to sleep in that keeps your head dry when it rains,” they would tell me. “Vacations in Mexico, excessive toys and gadgets are things you want and things you should work hard to enjoy.”
This doesn’t mean I necessarily wanted for anything… only that I understood the difference in needing a pair of shoes because there were holes in my other pair, and wanting a pair of shoes because they were pretty. But of course understanding this doesn’t mean I stopped wanting things.
And so tonight, as I sit here watching the spider in my window I can’t help but think she must want more in life.
I read in Time magazine that only 18 percent of people in their 20s are where they wanted and expected they would be at this juncture in their lives. How true is that. Sometimes I feel so defeated, despite having everything I need, having not achieved everything I thought I would have… everything I wanted to achieve… at this point in my life. Sometimes its hard not to feel like life has suckerpunched me, leaving me disoriented and gasping for breath.
Francis Mayes wrote, “They built the train tracks over the Alps between Vienna and Venice before there was a train that could make the trip. They built them anyway. They new the train would come.”
Did I think at 22 years old I’d be wearing a thigh-bearing Scottish kilt, busing tables, spending sleepless nights at a newspaper making next to no money and still not done with enough classes to graduate? No. But I won’t stay stuck between the panels of a window like this spider has settled for. I’m just building my train tracks.
My train will come.
1 Comment
September 17, 2008 at 4:50 pm
Blair,
Have a great day!
Watched ‘Under the Tuscan Sun’ last night and was inspired by the ‘train’ blurb at the end of the movie to google it this morning & voila, up pops a link to your blog on that topic. I enjoyed this read and your writing style & added you to my read list.