This month’s The Daily Stoic readings focus on awareness. Clarity, if you will. I write for clarity. Once upon a time, fables and stories were written for clarity, awareness of guiding principles, good reason and choices. I think most adults turn their noses up at fables, except those turned into movie, where often the “moral of the story” is lost in the Hollywood.

This is my response to this morning’s Stoic reading. Although it doesn’t align 100% with the message from Epictetus, it’s about self awareness. I changed the name in the story to protect my hawk friend and maybe added a little Hollywood to flesh him out. But this is mostly a true story.

Hank the Whiny Hawk

Hank’s parents had lost patience because he had become a whiny hawk. His call was an embarrassment to the family.

Hawks are proud of their song. Hollywood uses their call for eagle voiceovers in films and documentaries. Hank sounds pitiful, like an eagle, not a hawk. They had to leave, let Hank hunt on his own and stop begging for meals.

A hawk can go weeks without food, but not so long without water. At first, Hank takes water from the pools that formed in the fields after a rain. He requires extra because he spends hours calling for his parents: Feed me, feed me, come home and feed me. He takes breaks to preen himself and watch the small birds flitter from branch to branch, tree to bush.

They know I’m here, I’ll never catch them.

He preens hoping to make his parents proud, clean feathers, handsome hawk. But they don’t return.

After a few days, he knows he needs to go beyond the fields to find water. The sun moves from one side of Hank’s tree to the other. The breezes calm; the air warms.

“I’m starving,” he whines one last time, hoping his parents will hear him. All the small birds still themselves deep in bushes, and his parents don’t come.

Looking across the field—dry now—he remembers following his parents to a giant pond where they drank and splashed their wings.

Hank leaps from his branch. He’s an excellent flyer. His parents knew this before they left. Something on the ground scurrying across the field catches his eyes.

“Just as fast as I am!”

The harder Hank flaps, the faster it scurries. Hank begins a slow descent. He has seen his parents swoop to the ground and bring full meals to the nest.

“I’ll swoop.”

He prepares his claws for the catch, gaining, gaining, gaining, and down, with ginger claws, he grabs, and swoops up.

Still rising, Hank tilts his head toward his claws. Nothing but grasses and leaves. He releases, circles, looks, and sees it again.

“This time I’ll pounce. Pin it to the ground.”

Hank pursues from high, descends quickly, and swoops to land. Standing on the dark patch that dances in the grasses, Hank is confused. The darkness moves with him. He claws, bites, and scratches at the darkness. Nothing but grasses.

Pecking and clawing at the darkness, he makes his way across the field. When he finally looks up, the giant pool is before him, the darkness still beneath.

So thirsty.

Hanks approaches and bends to sip, then jumps back.

“Mom? Dad?”

But they disappear. Hank approaches again and sees one of them. No, not Mom. Her beak is darker. 

Hank tilts his head and so does the hawk staring back at him.

“You’re not Dad. He’s much broader.”

Hank steps forward, tilts his head again, looks back, tilt, forward, tilt. The hawk in the water moves with him.

“These are me!” Hank calls out, this time not whining, He hops in a circle and watches his darkness move with him, and his reflection toward him. Delirious with thirst and hunger, Hank nearly forgets to sip before taking a celebratory flight.

One giant sip with his eyes open to see his handsome self, then he sees it. A slippery, metallic bream whisks by his beak. Dinner.

Hanks takes a slow step into the water then, very still, one claw raised, just like that, he catches his first dinner.

©Pennie Nichols. All Rights Reserved. 2025