At times, it can feel natural to lament how boring our lives are; we do the same sorts of things each week and nothing special or exciting ever seems to happen. We enviously compare our dull routines to the adventures of others. An antidote to our sense of tedium can be found in the work of Sei Shōnagon, who lived around a thousand years ago. She kept a journal of the decade or so that she spent as a lady in waiting at the Imperial Palace in Kyoto, then the capital of Japan. Despite the high status of her job, her daily life was externally deeply uneventful. An afternoon’s carriage ride outside the walls of the Court compound might be the highlight of a year, and a day trip to hear a sermon in a temple seems to have been the furthest extent of her travels. She spent almost all of her time indoors, in just two or three rooms, and saw the same few people month after month. Her work largely involved keeping respectfully silent, knowing when to bow, and remembering the complex titles of various officials.
Yet, her work – the Pillow Book – gives the impression that she had a wonderful, open-minded time. We don’t really know where the lovely title of her book came from, but perhaps she slept with it under her head, occasionally adding a thought or observation by the light of the moon.
Typically, Shōnagon asked herself questions. For instance, what is the nicest time of day in the summer? It’s the night, especially if it’s raining. But in spring, she preferred the dawn; in autumn, sunset; and in winter, the morning. An event in her day included observing the frost on the branches of a plum tree, or enjoying the beating of the rain on the veranda roof. Such things don’t sound very thrilling, but by concentrating on them and appreciating them, they can become deep sources of satisfaction.
Shōnagon might also ask herself, what is it fun to see? It might be someone who’s usually very formal in their dress turning up looking a bit disheveled, or a curtain at an open window billowing in the breeze. A cat walking easily along the top of a narrow railing, water droplets on leaves in the garden, porters cleverly maneuvering a big load that one would think would be impossibly cumbersome to carry, or people whose clothes match the color of the room they’re in.
Shōnagon made long lists of words that sounded intriguing and had place names that sounded romantic. She delighted in describing little things that annoyed her – someone who takes too long telling a good story, something clever that she could have said but didn’t think of at the time, trying to get something done too quickly and making a mess of it and having to start all over again.
As we read, we might wish that our life were as interesting as hers. Yet, Shōnagon is secretly sharing the technique that would make our own existence equally rich, if we just knew how to ask ourselves more interesting questions. As with so many great books, Shōnagon’s Pillow Book leaves us not so much wanting to read it again, as to start writing our own private version.