The Socrates Express: In Search of Life Lessons from Dead Philosophers

by Eric Weiner

Shōnagon refuses to stay in a single lane. She swerves from “Refined and elegant things” to “Worthless things” then back to “Things that are truly splendid.” It’s tempting to conclude she is lost. She is not. She is engaging in zuihitsu, or “following the brush.” It’s a Japanese literary technique that is not a technique, which strikes me as the perfect way to write a book that is not a book. A writer practicing zuihitsu isn’t afraid to follow a hunch, scratch an intellectual itch, then circle back, or not. The writer doesn’t impose structure but, rather, allows one to emerge. All of us, I think, could use a bit more zuihitsu, and not only when it comes to writing. Set clear goals and channel all your energies into reaching them, the self-help books advise. This approach assumes we’ve identified our destination before beginning our journey. Life doesn’t work that way. Sometimes you don’t know where you’re going until you start moving. So move. Start where you are. Make a single brushstroke and see where it leads. Shōnagon doesn’t describe the world. She describes her world. No observation is neutral. She knows what she likes and what she doesn’t. She subscribes to perspectivism, the philosophical theory advanced by Nietzsche centuries later. There is not one truth but many. Choose one, says Shōnagon. Make it your own.