The other day, my family was out driving around the countryside, and we stopped at a farmer’s market with a wide-board fence out front. On our way out, laden with fresh lettuce and apples, I stopped to marvel at a spider’s web. It was strung between the tops of two fence posts, but it wasn’t horizontal, as you’d expect it to be. Instead, it was shaped like a skyscraper with a wide base, reaching high into the sky. The top of the web seemed completely unsupported; I really couldn’t imagine how the spider had created it.

It made me wonder at this tiny spider’s ability to construct something so creatively engineered, for her own ambitious reasons (to catch more high-flying bugs? To rest a pregnant belly?). She knew what she wanted to do, and she figured out a way to make it happen. That’s genuine creativity in nature.

Is there something that you really want to do, a pinnacle you want to reach, but you just can’t see a way up there?

Does the ladder taken by others seem impassable to you?

Do you feel like you’d need to be a rock-climber, taking a wandering way, backtracking and making impossible leaps, just to find a pathway that may not even exist?

What you need is the spider’s creativity.

Stand back. Look up. Imagine your goal up there. Understand that your way toward that goal may not be direct. It may not look like other people’s paths. It may involve setbacks. You may end up right back where you started for awhile.

But there is a way. One foothold at a time. One creative inspiration, one flicker of courage.

One gossamer-thin strand of webbing.

If a spider can do it, so can you.