Daily Times

Last week, my husband and I found ourselves on the water every morning. Before the fog had lifted from the cove view of a lake in South Carolina, my husband cast his fishing rod into the water. I settled into the covered area of the dock with my coffee cup and a handful of books. This vacation was all about beauty and solitude. Each day also found me observing the multitude of spiders and their dawn-to-dusk behaviour. The spiders repaired their webs early in the day. But by the time the sun was full in the sky, the spiders that had begun the day with spinning activities had for the most part retired to the edges of their dainty filigree homes. Now their time was spent awaiting their very welcome guests.

It occurred to me that humans are quite similar to the spider population. Each of us spins the web of our own existence. Our world exists and finds meaning by the daily tending to the threads of our lives. These threads form our core identity and give us a sense of place in a world that now supports seven billion additional spider webs. It is important, and indeed healthy that we not be reduced to nothingness. The threads of our lives make the journey on earth worth the trip.

My own world begins each morning as I step out of bed onto a rug that is woven with the image of Genghis Khan. As my bare feet touch it, I am reminded that I travelled to the steppes of Mongolia as part of a medical team to provide care for the inhabitants. I am also reminded of the horrific human toll during the siege of Baghdad by Mongol forces in 1258. I am still alive. And each morning, I am empowered by stepping onto the likeness of a great warrior who orchestrated the consolidation of the Mongol empire. But the history of Genghis Khan and his Mongolian hordes also reminds me it is best to live quietly and with a distinct kindness. I travelled about 6,700 miles to create this particular thread of my personal web. It is a good one!
All of us have certain common threads when spinning our webs. We all have ancestors. This is a strongly spun thread for our existence. Our place on the historical timeline is another thread upon which we walk each day. My mother’s perception of life is quite different from my own. She was a child in the shadow of World War II. I was born during a time of relative peace. Our place of birth is perhaps the strongest thread on our web. To be born a Pathan living along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan is very different to being born as an American whose earliest memories are of ocean waves and seashells.

So it is quite amazing to ponder that one spider spinning a thread in the US (in a nation with 312 million citizen spiders) can elicit such a mighty upheaval of the spider populations in Egypt, Pakistan and beyond. One spider spun a thread with a low budget anti-Islam YouTube production. Spiders in Egypt tried to scale the US embassy walls. Spiders in Pakistan came off their webs to vandalise and cannibalise their own economy. The list goes on.

What is painful to ponder is the following. While many of us globe trot, it is very possible that some of the regional spiders activated to cause havoc against an anti-Islam film have never travelled beyond a 100 mile radius of their place of birth. But then again, their web and its threads define their existence. They found a strong thread of their love for Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) threatened. And they felt the need to respond, the need to spin again the thread that defines their reason for living.
One of the strongest threads to my own identity is that of being an American by birth. Attached to that thread is the belief that freedom of expression brings societal health. I retain a vibrant conviction that speech should not be censored. Rather, that those who continue to evolve within a healthy society learn the delicate art of retaining a non-offensive posture to the opinions of the other. Yes, we may scratch a post over any given topic; we may rush to the bully pulpit of our belief and show our uvula as we shout. But at the end of the day, we return to, and are comforted within the web of our own existence. It is as it should be. With seven billion of us now inhabiting this planet, I scarcely have the time to tend to my own threads, much less the threads of your existence.

An additional beloved thread on my web is a love for the United States Constitution. On my desk is Constitutional Law, Thirteenth Edition by Gerald Gunther and Kathleen M Sullivan. The thing weighs more than the weight of my firstborn son on the day he first peeked out at his own new world. So I stand in firm opposition to the enslavement of the United States Constitution to the corpus juris of a distinctly different civilisation. The Muslim world has some absolutely beautiful civilisational markers. Anti-blasphemy laws appear as the medieval tools that were used to assure the future of a nascent Islamic state. Beyond historical value, they cannot be applied in a healthy manner within open and free societies. I do not want my culture erased. I want the US to remain as it is — a place where freedom of expression is a protected right for every citizen.

Our last morning at the lake I watched as a small winged insect flew into the web of one of the larger spiders. In an act of mercy, I released the insect from captivity and a certain death. Perhaps we should consider doing the same for each other. Let us comfortably live within the web of our own existence. And let us be at peace with the other spiders.

The writer is a freelance journalist and can be reached at tammyswof@msn.com