The Stubborn Bottle

My dad and I were sitting at the breakfast table. He, eating his hard boiled egg with toast, and I, my full-on oat on milk drink that I’ve had every morning, ever since elementary school - which is, a long time ago.

Cracking his egg, dad said with annoyance, “You know, this Maggi sauce - it’s just been sticking to its awful bottle for years! Its head spurting out off-target every time”. 

I glanced at the bottle, and nodded heavily, “I know what you mean! Maggi must know how good it tastes, to continue to keep its awful bottle". You know, all it has to do is to modify the top so that it has a flow-back plastic that prevents any messiness. Hundreds of sauces and oils, especially Japanese ones, use these.

Gulping down the last bit of my oat mush, I heard the words echo through my head, ‘The enemy of a great life, is a good life’. 

Sometimes one’s comfort zone creates an environment where the urge to improve on things becomes somewhat idle work - and change, an unnecessary exercise. 

Later that day, I went for a walk to get some groceries at the neighborhood supermarket. 

At the dry goods section, I saw a few rows of Nissin noodles, one of the oldest brands in the market.

A charming NHK TV series ‘Mampuku’ is based on the story of the birth and life of this legendary noodle in the hands of its founder and his family. Starting from its intentional and extremely iterative home-based process of creating the first dry noodle in Japan, to the intelligent and opportunistic identification of a market opportunity to produce and market initially to night-shift workers, to what we today call the highly popular Cup Noodles. 

Dissatisfactions, struggles, delayed-successes (not failures), imperfections, more dissatisfactions and more iterations, are what I believe to be a necessary and positive part of life that we should seek out, and not shy away from. 

It is what molds us, refines us, strengthens us and makes us whole. It is a calling and a chance to be better.