On Perseverance
Lessons from spiders
The spider in my carport was not having a good time. When I first spotted it — a Garden Orb Weaver (Hortophora sp, Araneidae) tucked away in the eaves — I thought it was a bat. That dark furry body all cwtched up in the corner, with two pairs of legs pointed forward, looking like folded wings… An easy mistake to make because it was a big spider.
I knew there would be a problem. When I went out to the car that evening, the spider had constructed its web across the carport. The threads spanned the entrance, almost four metres across. As I started the engine and put the vehicle into reverse, I hoped the spider would retreat to the ceiling. Otherwise, the surprise and joy of snaring the biggest meal of its life would turn rapidly to dismay as it found itself car surfing all the way into town and back.
The spider did scuttle upwards to safety. By the time I returned from town, it had patched the torn web. The threads looked perfect in the headlights. I even considered parking in the driveway but it was raining heavily by now. The spider scrambled into the ceiling again. As I drove under it, I could feel all eight beady eyes boring through the car roof. Four eyes were resigned, the others unforgiving. If it had been Charlotte the Barn Spider, the remade web would have included a few choice words, none of which I can write here.
By next morning, the spider had shifted away from the car. This time it had constructed its web across the front door.
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, and try again.
You might be familiar with the story of King Robert I of Scotland — Robert the Bruce — and a persistent spider. Robert’s history is complex, a mosaic of allegiances and strategies, judgements and misjudgements, forged during the war to free Scotland from English rule. After murdering John Comyn, his rival for the Scottish throne, Robert was crowned king at Scone Abbey on 25 March 1306. (Although not on the Stone of Destiny, which had been stolen by the English King Edward I in 1296 and removed to London.)
Less than three months after the coronation, Robert I faced the English army at Methven, a short distance from Scone. He lost the battle to Aymer de Valence and his soldiers, and retreated. But not for long. A little over a year later, he met de Valence again at Loudoun Hill, south of Glasgow. The outcome this time was very different.
Writing 500 years after the Battle of Methven, Sir Walter Scott related the story of Robert the Bruce and the spider in his Tales of a Grandfather — Being Stories Taken From Scottish History (1828–1830).
…his eye was attracted by a spider, which, hanging at the end of a long thread of its own spinning, was endeavouring, as is the fashion of that creature, to swing itself from one beam in the roof to another, for the purpose of fixing the line on which it meant to stretch its web. The insect made the attempt again and again without success; and at length Bruce counted that it had tried to carry its point six times, and been as often unable to do so. It came into his head that he had himself fought just six battles against the English and their allies, and that the poor persevering spider was exactly in the same situation with himself, having made as many trials, and been as often disappointed in what it aimed at. “Now,” thought Bruce,” as I have no means of knowing what is best to be done, I will be guided by the luck which shall attend this spider. If the insect shall make another effort to fix its thread, and shall be successful, I will venture a seventh time to try my fortune in Scotland…
The spider wove its web.
Robert the Bruce stayed in Scotland. He led the fight for Scottish independence, which culminated in the Battle of Bannockburn in June 1314, when the numerically superior English army of Edward II was defeated and sent back across the border. On 27 March 1328, the Treaty of Edinburgh — Northampton formally ended what became known as the First War of Scottish Independence. Signed by Edward III, the treaty brought peace between the two countries. Robert had fought and beaten three English kings.
(The peace did not last.)
In Scott’s story, the spider is a symbol of perseverance and resilience. Robert the Bruce took inspiration from the tiny creature as it resolutely worked towards its goal, undeterred by failure. The intricacy and precision of the web, the care taken to repair the threads, and the endless patience in waiting for prey are each lessons in themselves.
But even the spider in my carport knew that perseverance is not inexhaustable. After the postie, a courier and the man who reads the meter walked through the web, the spider finally threw up its eight hands in exasperation and moved into the garden where it only had to face rain, wind and marauding magpies. It had reached the point where the exertion of repairing the web exceeded the benefit of catching insects. Potential insects, of course. The effort of maintenance is a known quantity, whereas the insects are hypothetical until they blunder into the web. And they might never blunder (unlike the postie, the courier and the man who reads the meter).
There’s a lot to be said about perseverance but there’s an equal amount in favour of dispassionate cost-benefit analyses and making sensible choices. That’s the lesson I take from the Garden Orb Weaver, which had given the carport and the front door a red hot go and then cut its losses.
If the Garden Orb Weaver had Charlotte’s skill, it might have written in silk the words of a great modern philosopher: You’ve got to know when to hold ’em/Know when to fold ‘em.