H Is For Hawk By Daodejing

Helen McDonald writing in H is for Hawk is a memoir. She is a falconer, something that was considered masculine. She has trained a lot of birds but never a goshawk which is a salvage bird. She learns of her father’s death and sits down with her phone on her ear. On waking up with her arm outstretched, a hawk was sitting on it. Later on, we find her adopting the bird and naming it Mabel. The bird helps her overcome her grief through the training she conducted to it which she admits to as hard. Her memoir is blended with obsession, myth, history, and memory.

The book airs out the need to enhance personal mechanism for coping with challenges. From the grief, she avoids people and seeks solitary just like the hawk. With Mabel as a companion,

She had gotten used to the bird to an extent of acquiring some of its behaviors. The only difference is that she would cook her pheasant like chestnuts, unlike Mabel, who ate them raw. The book Daodejing, which is a translation from the Chinese language, talks about how real wisdom often supersedes the wisdom that take a dramatic leap away from our normal view to imagine things. The book articulates for concepts that have been into existence in the Asian culture. Laozi, the author of Daodejing, would apply his key concepts that have been covered in the text such as asking Macdonald to change her perspective to life. To McDonald, keeping occupied with Mabel her hawk was the only thing she perceived important in her life, that is why she went away from friends and family a habit that kept her watching the hawk just the way a hawk watches its prey from up the tree.

McDonald behaved like a hawk in the quest for solace after her father died. It was hard for her to let off go the grief. On the contrary, Laozi, the writer of Dao De Jing writes of reality, acceptance, and moving on. Laozi would have moved on despite the grief by facing the fears and acceptance the