Lessons from The Ramen Girl

I watched The Ramen Girl last night. I know, I know… not exactly the kind of movie you’d expect from a carnivorous, Olympic-lifting male, but I did. And you know what? I enjoyed it. Truth be told, I actually like romantic comedies as a genre—call me a sensitive, new-age guy, if you must—but what I enjoyed most from The Ramen Girl wasn’t the trials and tribulations of Brittany Murphy, or even the food (and I love food movies).

Mmm... steaming hot ramen.

What I enjoyed most about the movie, without giving away too many details, was the main ingredient that Brittany Murphey’s character, Abby, learned to infuse into her ramen that made it special: spirit. Because in the end, this was not a movie about ramen, or romance. It was about finding one’s place in the world by focusing on the how more than the what.

“How” comes from within

The fact that Abby learned to make a great bowl of ramen is secondary to what it required of her to do it. She got the recipe right long before she was able to make a meal that was worthy of being served to her customers, because she was taught that making soup isn’t just about getting a bunch of ingredients and assembling them. It’s about heart. Unless your soup has spirit, it hasn’t got anything.

It’s a lesson that, I believe, resonates for many of us. We spend a lot of time reading books about parachutes or real-life stories of people searching for their “perfect” jobs. We’re taught to believe that if we just find the right career, we’ll be mystically satiated, and we’ll labor away blissfully for the rest of our lives. The emphasis here is placed on the initial discovery, and the promise is that once that discovery is made, the rest is downhill. (If you think about it, this ideal is promulgated in many arenas, from relationships to parenting to politics.)

The Ramen Girl teaches something else, though. It teaches that “getting the recipe right” is only the first step. In order to truly do something well, to transform it from ordinary to exceptional—and to transform yourself in the process—requires an internal contribution that goes beyond meticulousness and hard work. You have to invest yourself in what you’re doing. You have to be willing to be vulnerable, to give of yourself to your patrons through your work. It makes work personal, intimate, and unique.

The Divine is in the Details

As a webdesigner, I can churn out code until the cows come home. I can tweak settings, configure plugins, and customize design details until my fingers turn blue. And in so doing, I can be a good webdesigner, and serve my clients well. I’ll even feel the satisfaction of a job well done. But, is that all I should hope for?

If you want to feel like you’re doing your best work, the scorecard that matters is not the one that can be judged by what shows up on the screen, or on the paper, or in the product. Satisfaction—the bone-deep, spirit-lifting, existential experience of meaning—is found in the value and the interaction of your work and its target. In other words, it’s what your work creates in the experience of another that comes back to you as satisfaction. If it matters, then it matters, no matter what you’re called, from carpenter to coach to CEO.

It’s in the pursuit of that intangible satisfaction that work finds its meaning, we find our purpose, and the path of mastery is made clear. And, at every step of the way, it’s up to you to choose the giving road, the road of excellence, the road of interaction and connection, with your soul laid bare. It may not be easy, but the best things in life rarely come without incredible effort.

Image by bass_nroll.