Who Moved My Cheese?

Who Moved My Cheese?

By Dr. Spencer Johnson

Most People resist change. They are scared to leave one place because of several reasons but one of them is fear of the unknown. What might happen if? This question has affected us all in one way or another, but what would we do if we weren’t afraid?

Who moved my cheese talks of change. Simply change in work, relationships, or just life.

It represents the idea of change through a metaphor. The story’s main characters, actually, are two mice and two littlepeople. They are called “little people” because they are as small as mice and acted a lot like people. Those four characters live in a maze which is a metaphor of our environment and they hunt for cheese which represents happiness and success.

Every day the two mice and the two littlepeople go to the same place for their cheese but one day they go to the same place at the same time to find nothing. No cheese. Sniff and scurry, the two mice, are not surprised and so go on to hunt for cheese somewhere else.  Hem and Haw, the littlepeople, are annoyed,though, and Hem demands “Who Moved my cheese?!”. They come each day to the same place hoping that cheese will appear again and therefore remain starved. Meanwhile, sniff and scurry succeed in finding another place full of cheese.

Hem and Haw’s unwillingness is a metaphor to how we in our lives sometimes aren’t convinced that something is over. We keep convincing ourselves that what we are used to will magically appear again, not realizing that moving on can lead to another road where will find happiness just like sniff and scurry did. In the end Hem and Haw realize they need to move from this place and finally after setbacks and loss of morale they reached another place full of cheese. That’s basically life. We will always find new cheese somewhere else.

 

Written By: Bassant El-Taher