Seneca | CW Hawes

The Meaning of Christmas

Let me begin by saying, Christmas means different things to different people. So, I suppose, I should have titled this post: The Meaning of Christmas to Me. And you, my dear reader, are completely free to agree or disagree with my thoughts.

At base, Christmas is a Christian holy day that celebrates the birth of the Christ; the one who came to take away the sins of the world.

However, in this largely post-Christian era, Christmas has essentially become a secular holiday devoted to exchanging gifts and having a feast with family and friends.

For myself, even though I no longer believe there was a historical Jesus, I try to steer a middle way between the religious and the secular.

Now you may ask, how the heck can I do that? Isn’t it one or the other? Especially if I don’t even believe there was a Jesus?

For me, the answer is simple. The Christmas story expresses a hope. A hope that humanity can transcend its desire for self-destruction. That we humans can, in fact, become a species that values the other above self. That we can learn to practice the Golden Rule in our thoughts and in our actions. That we can learn to value peace over war, love over hate, freedom over slavery.

Stoicism is my life philosophy of choice. In particular, the Stoicism espoused by Lucius Annaeus Seneca.

Seneca’s Stoicism was pragmatic, not dogmatic. And that put him at odds with Stoics in his own day, and it puts him at odds with many of the Neo-Stoics of today.

For me, Seneca is a philosopher for the 21st century. Even though he lived two millennia ago, he could have just as easily lived today.

“All truth is mine,” he wrote to his friend Lucilius. Seneca was not a dogmatician. His Stoicism fit the practical needs of the Romans of his day, and it fits the needs of those of us who live in the first world of today. The times haven’t changed all that much.

With Seneca, I say, ALL TRUTH IS MINE. I basically follow the Stoic way, but deviate where I need to do so in order to follow the truth (more accurately, what is truth for me).

As a result, I can rejoice in the hope of the Christmas season without being a Christian, or believing that Jesus existed.

Because the truth is — everyone hopes the meaning of Christmas becomes a reality. That weapons of war are turned into tools of peace. That we all turn the other cheek, rather than get offended and strike back. That we forgive others, as we ourselves wish to be forgiven. And that we do to others, as we want them to do to us.

Christmas is our wish to transcend ourselves and become Human 2.0. And who, at heart, doesn’t want to become a better person? Merry Christmas!

Comments are always welcome. And until next time, happy living!

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Best Reads — A Half-Time Assessment

Reading is, for me, the best entertainment. More than movies, more than TV, reading provides a person with more entertainment stimulus, and definitely more interaction.

That’s because movies and TV are like watching a baseball game. Whereas, reading is like playing in a baseball game.

June is almost over, and with it the first half of 2021. So I took a look at my reading from January to the present, and thought I’d share with you my thoughts about some of the books and stories I’ve read.

Thus far, I’ve read:

25 novels/novellas
36 novelettes/short stories
5 screenplays
3 non-fiction books

And I’m currently reading Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely, which I’ll undoubtedly finish before month’s end.

Were there any books or authors that particularly grabbed my attention? There were!

The brand-new-to-me author who grabbed my attention was Garrett Dennis with his book Port Starbird: A Storm Ketchum Adventure. In fact, the book so impressed me I bought the entire series, which you can find on Amazon.

I love Mr Dennis’ laidback style of storytelling. No in-your-face-from-the-beginning action, just a deliciously slow build-up of tension to the action-packed climax. Which is how a story should be told, IMO.

Port Starbird was a wonderful read, Garrett Dennis is a talented writer, and I heartily recommend him for your reading pleasure.

The novelette/short story that most impressed me was my re-read of “The Colour Out Of Space” by HP Lovecraft, which is probably his best work.

However, right behind HPL’s novelette was “The Cold Equations” by Tom Godwin. The story was originally published in the August 1954 issue of Astounding Science Fiction magazine. I ran across a PDF on the web, and I’m glad I did. You can read it on LightSpeed ezine. It’s a powerful story about breaking the rules and owning up to the consequences.

The novel/novella that lingers in my mind is Last Deadly Lie by Caleb Pirtle III. It’s a masterful piece of writing. A fine example of contemporary Southern Gothic. Mystery, lies, intrigue, and deceit — all expertly woven together to make a story that will linger on in your mind long after you’ve read the last page.

I should add that Mr Pirtle had high-powered competition from the likes of William Meikle, Greig Beck, James Vincett, Andy Graham, John F Leonard, and the above mentioned Garrett Dennis.

I cannot encourage you enough to get a copy of Last Deadly Lie. For me, it is the book to beat this year. You can find it on Amazon.

Non-fiction comes in all shapes, sizes, and subjects. In most cases, I don’t find it to have much more than momentary impact. But that is not the case with How to Die: An Ancient Guide to the End of Life; edited and translated by James S Romm from the writings of Lucius Annaeus Seneca.

Seneca never wrote a book on death, although he wrote a lot about death. Professor Romm has done us the great favor of “writing” the book Seneca didn’t get to.

I am not exaggerating when I write: How to Die is one of the most impactful books I’ve ever read. It is, quite ironically, one of the best books on how to live that you could ever read.

Seneca was sick his entire life. Never far from Death’s Door. For him, the possibility of death was a daily reality; and it was the reality of death that taught him how to live and get the most out of life.

How to Die is an amazing book. I urge everyone to get a copy and read it. You can find it on Amazon.

That’s my wrap-up of the best reads during the first half of 2021. Now on to the joy to be found in books during the second half of the year.

Comments are always welcome. And until next time, happy reading!

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On Anger

Let’s be kinder to one another. After all, we’re just wicked people living among wicked people. Only one thing can give us peace, and that’s a pact of mutual leniency.
—Seneca, in “On Anger”

Seneca’s treatise, On Anger, even though written 2,000 years ago, is very much an essay for today.

Over the last 4 years, I’ve observed anger and hate and vitriol on a scale that I’ve not witnessed in my lifetime. Not even the 1960s were as bad.

What the left has done during the Trump administration, I’m afraid has set a precedent for the right to follow during the coming Biden administration. A spiraling cycle of anger and hate and vitriol no matter who is in the White House or who controls Congress.

I’ve seen people publicly say that they no longer wanted to be friends with anyone who supported Trump. And those who publicly said they weren’t friends with anyone who didn’t support Trump.

Politics is a pretty small reason over which to destroy a friendship.

Just think about this: name 10 presidents from before you were born. Presidents are here today and gone tomorrow. Can you name 5 speakers of the house, or 5 Senate majority leaders. Or 10 vice presidents?

Why destroy a friendship, that can last a lifetime, over something so evanescent as politics? In my mind, that is just plain stupid. But then we are living in an age of stupidity.

In the above quote, Seneca hits the nail on the head. We the people are all the same: wicked. Or to be more contemporary, flawed. Not perfect.

If we are to have any hope of living together, we have to extend to everyone — whether we agree with them or not — a pact of leniency.

What does that mean? Leniency is “the fact or quality of being more merciful or tolerant than expected”.

If we exhibited mercy and tolerance in a greater degree than the person we’re extending it to expected — then we are being lenient. And in being lenient, we aren’t saying, I agree with you. We’re saying, I will be your friend even though I disagree with you. Our friendship is more valuable than the individual views we hold.

We are currently at a place where intolerance is destroying the fabric of our society. There is no longer a place for civil disagreement. When in fact we cannot but help disagreeing with each other over something. No two people ever agree 100% on anything.

I’ve become over the years essentially apolitical. After observing the political process for the past 50+ years, I’ve come to the conclusion that it matters little who is in power. President A does things, and then President B undoes them. It’s a case of 2 steps forwards and 2 steps backwards.

But what I do find alarming is the amount of anger I am seeing freely expressed by people in public and on social media. No society can survive if people do not extend leniency towards each other.

Seneca knew this. He was involved in Imperial Roman politics. He had to endure and survive the anger of emperors. Anger that meant instant death if it turned on you. His wise advice regarding anger is something all of us need to heed today.

You can find Seneca’s excellent treatise in a new translation on Amazon.

There is, in addition, a fine abridged version geared more towards practical application, also to be found on Amazon.

I have both, and both are good. They are highly recommended. And who knows? Perhaps we all can become less angered by what is happening all around us and with events in our daily lives, and find a little peace. And who doesn’t want peace?

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, may you enjoy peace in your life!

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On the Shortness of Life

A little over a week ago, I learned of the death of a fellow indie author. I did not know Laila Doncaster, except in passing. We exchanged a few words now and then on Twitter, occasionally retweeted each other’s tweets, and that was that.

Her first book of a projected series was published on May 1st. Her bio on Amazon speaks of looking forward to an early retirement. And now she’s dead.

I am saddened. Very much so. A person looking forward to the future, an exciting future, and now there is no future. She’s gone.

Every now and again someone will chasten me for my attitude towards my writing. The sense of intense urgency I have to put pen to paper.

I am driven to produce as much as I can, as fast as I can, and get as many copies of my books into as many hands as I can.

I’m told I shouldn’t feel so driven. I’m told I shouldn’t be looking over my shoulder for the Grim Reaper, while my pen is scratching out page after page of words.

All I can say in response to these well-meaning folk is to quote Seneca: “The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.”

Or to paraphrase: I might die tonight — I need to write today. After all, only I can write my books; and I have many score begging to be written down.

Seneca’s essay, On the Shortness of Life, needs to be required reading. It is the antidote to the carelessness with which most of us approach life and live life — which is the most non-renewable of resources.

I’m 67 years old, and I’m somewhat ashamed to admit I’ve wasted most of the time given to me in this thing we call life.

Ever since I can remember, I’ve wanted to be a writer. However, it wasn’t until I was 37 that I actually, in all seriousness, began to act on my desire instead of just dabble. And it was another 11 years before I began to see the fruit of that action.

According to the actuarial tables, I have another 10 years to live. That’s not a lot of time. And anything can happen between now and then to shorten those 10 years.

Seneca wrote:

It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it.

There’s some comfort in that advice, yet how many of us know how to use our time and not waste it? I confess I’m still struggling with that one. But here, too, Seneca has some advice for us:

No activity can be successfully pursued by an individual who is preoccupied … since the mind when distracted absorbs nothing deeply, but rejects everything which is, so to speak, crammed into it. Living is the least important activity of the preoccupied man; yet there is nothing which is harder to learn… Learning how to live takes a whole life, and, which may surprise you more, it takes a whole life to learn how to die.

In other words, it is unproductive busyness, unproductive worry and anxiety, unproductive lack of focus, unproductive preoccupation with things that don’t matter that rob us of the one thing that does matter — irreplaceable time.

It is the life lived deliberately that is the fruitful life. It is the focused life that is the productive life. As Rainer Maria Rilke advised the young poet: once you’ve decided you must write, then you must structure your life so that nothing gets in the way of writing. Harlan Ellison put it more cryptically: “Writers write.”

I might beat the actuarial odds. My mom was 80 when she died. My dad is 87. His mother died in her 90s, although the last few years she was debilitated by a stroke, and his father died a month shy of his 103 birthday. But I can’t bank on it. Which means I have to write today.

As Seneca noted:

…the man who … organizes every day as though it were his last, neither longs for nor fears the next day… Nothing can be taken from this life, and you can only add to it as if giving to a man, who is already full and satisfied, food which he does not want but can hold.

Living deliberately is the key. And when we do, life — no matter how long or short — is time enough to accomplish great things.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy and productive living!

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Why I Write

Almost all of us, at least at one time or another, have the desire to live forever.

It’s why we procreate, and make things. It’s why we strive to make a difference: we want to be remembered. It’s why we believe in an afterlife, and why we’re fascinated with spirits and ghosts, vampires and werewolves.

It’s also why many, if not most, writers write. We have the hope that our books will give us a measure of immortality.

Of course, achieving immortality by means of the written word isn’t a whole lot different than one’s chances of becoming rich by winning the lottery. Just count how many perennial bestselling authors there are versus the number of new authors published each year, and the number of authors who never reach bestseller status but continue to write books. We’re talking thimbles to boxcars here.

And that doesn’t count the number of bestselling authors who pass into oblivion once they die. Their names are legion.

The number of writers who achieve immortality is indeed tiny.

One has a better chance of achieving immortality by becoming a mass murderer than by becoming an author — NOT that I recommend one should do so. Just sayin’.

When it comes to the desire to live forever, I’m like everyone else: bring it on! Or at least let me live for six, eight centuries. There are so many things I want to explore and do, and one lifetime hasn’t been enough.

Writing is a relatively easy avenue whereby one can hope to achieve immortality. After all, books last a very long time. Paper books, that is. Not sure how long these ebooks will last. Software and formats, tend to become obsolete. Remember floppy discs, Beta and VHS tapes, cassettes?

Ebooks are in the same category as those acid-laden wood pulp magazines that are self-destructing because of the cheap paper they were printed on. As the pulp magazines crumble into dust, so too do media vehicles become useless junk. Something to think about.

Nevertheless, by means of stories, I can tell whoever will listen to me what I think about life, who I am as a person, what my dreams and hopes are (or were). And if my stories become popular enough, then they will make the transition to each new storage medium that comes along. After all, I can read Shakespeare and Euripides on my ereader.

My desire to live a very long life, if not forever, and to write lots of books crystalized in the wake of close encounters of the near death kind.

About a dozen years ago I came close to death due to misdiagnosed appendicitis and consequently a ruptured appendix. The doctor told me I was a lucky man. The rupture created quite a mess. Then a couple years later, I had a heart attack. The left anterior descending artery was blocked. Colloquially called “The Widowmaker” because of its high percentage of fatalities. Again, the doctor told me I was a lucky man.

Now I have been told I have kidney disease. For which there is no cure. The only treatment is to follow good health practices in an attempt to slow the progress.

Death is my friend. My mortality has been made very clear to me. It is why I write and why I have such a feeling of urgency about writing. If it weren’t for the Grim Reaper standing in the corner of my room, I’d probably get lazy and slack off.

Of course, we don’t live forever, at least in this life, and it is the only one I care about at the moment, and this life is short. Although I always keep in mind Seneca’s words, “Life is long enough if you know how to use it.” That last clause is of course the rub: we usually learn too late how to use it well. We squander the most precious and rare gift doing and pursuing what is ultimately not of much value.

Writing brings me great joy. It also helps me to become a better person. Through my characters I hone what is important in my own life and discard what is not.

Around 40 to 45 percent of us are kinesthetic/tactile learners. These folk learn by acting and playing and touching. Through my characters, I live many lives and face many dilemmas and learn many things about myself, because they are after all the people I have made in my image.

I know writing brings me great joy and that I do it mostly for the sake of writing, because I make darn little money at it. The pot of gold continues to elude me. Yet, maybe my heirs will hit on the right marketing strategy and my books will sell and I will achieve that immortality we all desire. After all, my books will be in copyright for 70 years after I pass on. That’s more or less another lifetime. That too is something to think about.

Life is long enough if we know how to use it. I may at last be getting the knack of it. We’ll see. I’ll keep you posted.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!

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