It’s funny where ‘inspiration’ can hit you from. Last night, I was taking out the rubbish and recycling as is my weekly duty, and as I bent down to open the bin cupboard outside I came face to face with an ENORMOUS spider, all legs and fat body. Now, I don’t particularly like spiders – find them a bit creepy really – but it’s not an overriding phobia, and I certainly don’t hold with killing creepy crawlies just because they give me the heeby-jeebies (apart from wasps – they’re just pure evil). But this spider made me jump, so I blew on it to try to encourage it to scuttle away. Which half of it did. Ah-ha. Not ‘spider’ but ‘spiders’, and I had just ruined a rather romantic moment. From being slightly scared and uncomfortable I felt myself now feeling slightly guilty! I know spiders are good for the garden, keeping away pests and so on, and all that the poor little things were doing was following a natural urge to make more little spiders. This got me back to thinking about the ‘bigger picture’ and leaping to conclusions, and in particular the ‘paradigm shift’ that Covey talks about in 7 Habits (the part where he talks about being on the subway and feeling irritated with a man ignoring his unruly kids, only to find out that they had just lost their mother). If I had stopped and looked properly I would have realised what was actually going on, and would have been far more gentle in manoeuvring the bins so as not to disturb the amorous pair. As it was, my haste led to coitus interuptus arachnidi, and longer term probably more midges in my garden…! It’s a rather silly and irreverent example I know, but I just thought I’d share it. And in terms of ‘paradigm shift’, I wonder how many readers have read this post expecting, from the title, something a little more saucy??? ;-)