Who Moved My Cheese

Summary

The story “Who Moved My Cheese?” is a parable starring four characters: two mice named Sniff and Scurry and two small humans named Hem and Haw. They are on a quest for cheese and so each day, early in the morning, Hem, Haw, Sniff and Scurry put on their jogging suits and their tennis shoes and enter a maze in search of cheese. Eventually they find cheese at Cheese station C and they enjoy it, but immediately the reader notices something peculiar about Sniff and Scurry when compared to Hem and Haw. Sniff and Scurry tie their shoes around their necks and they rise early in the morning to race to Cheese Station C and inspect it for any changes, they would then sit down and eat. In comparison, Hem and Haw put their shoes away and rise progressively later, arrogantly believing that the cheese will always be there. They built their lives around the cheese, moving their homes closer and showing their cheese off to friends. In time they felt they were entitled to it having worked so hard. Haw wrote on the wall: “Having Cheese Makes You Happy”

One day Sniff and Scurry raced off to Cheese Station C only to find that there was no cheese. They weren’t surprised, after all, they had been inspecting the station each morning and they kept their running shoes on. The Cheese had moved and so would they. Pretty soon both Sniff and Scurry had moved on in search of new cheese. Hem and Haw arrived some time later to the cheese-less station. “Who Moved My Cheese?” cried Hem. His cheese had made him comfortable and he wanted to get to the bottom of its disappearance. Haw had also gotten comfortable with the cheese at Station C and sadly wrote on the wall “The More Important Your Cheese is, The More You Want to Hold On to It”. Each night Hem and Haw went home hungry, each morning they went back to cheese station C hoping for a change. Hem, at one point came up with a brilliant idea. Perhaps the cheese wasn’t so far away. Maybe it was on the other side of the wall. They arrived with a pickax and hammer and worked at breaking down the wall. Pretty soon they had a very large hole but no cheese.

As they continued to do the same thing, they began to suffer the consequences, not only did they leave the station hungry each day, but their family life began to dissolve. Pretty soon they became depressed and irritable. Haw began to wonder where Sniff and Scurry were and whether they had found any new cheese. He wanted to go out into the maze, but found that his idea was shot down by Hem who brought up the very real dangers of getting lost, looking like a fool and finding no cheese. For a while, Haw let his fear keep him at the same cheeseless station, but one day he pulled out his tennis shoes and shouted, “its maze time.” As a parting gift to Hem he wrote on the wall “If you don’t change, you become extinct”.

Now, one must realize that Hem, Haw Sniff and Scurry had spent a long while a cheese station C. By the time that Haw had come out of the station and gone into the maze, he was unused to the adventure and hungry. His body began to show the effects in his slow pace. Further, because he had not explored the maze for a while he was not prepared for the numerous dead ends and on several occasions felt like returning to cheese station C. He was afraid he would not find any cheese. He wrote on the wall as a sort of encouragement “What would I do if I wasn’t afraid?” On his journey toward new cheese he did encounter many dead ends, but he also encountered enough cheese to keep him going. New cheese which he had never heard of, but liked all the same once he tried it. While on his journey he constantly imagined what it would be like to find new cheese. The more he imagined it, the more real he made it, the more energy the image gave him. He wrote “Imagining yourself with new cheese helps you find it. “On one occasion, he returns back to Hem and offers some of the small morsels he had picked up along the way. Hem declines citing he had never tried that cheese before and that it was not what he was used to. He wanted his old cheese back. Saddened, but determined to find a large store of cheese like he had been imagining, Haw pressed on. After all, “it is safer to search for new cheese than remain in a cheeseless station.”

Eventually, Haw did finally find Cheese Station N, where his friends Sniff and Scurry had been since shortly after the cheese in Cheese Station C had run out. He began to adopt some of their behaviors once he found the New Cheese in Cheese Station N. He kept his tennis shoes around his neck, ready for a new adventure. Day by day he also sniffed around the station and noted any changes and he continued to explore the maze even while being contented with the cheese in station N. Toward the end of the story, Haw, Sniff and Scurry hear something in the maze getting progressively closer. Haw toys with the idea that Hem might’ve finally left Cheese station C, but the question is left for the reader to ponder.

Interpretation

The characters Hem, Haw, Sniff and Scurry are represented in each of us as we confront the idea of change. Overall we may be represented by just one of the characters. We may Sniff out new opportunities or Sniff out our current situation to see if anything has changed, we may Scurry in the direction of change, we may remain stubborn and stuck within our own habits, feel a sense of entitlement. We may Hem and complain that change is simply not supposed to happen to us, or we may Haw about our stubborn and ineffective behavior and move on eventually.
It’s more likely that we as human beings pass through the stages of change in a way that is similar to the stages of grief.

We begin at the Hem stage, in a comfort zone and with a feeling of entitlement we settle into a routine. We begin to build our lives around the idea that whatever our “cheese” is will be there forever. We reach a goal or get something and we rest on our laurels, not realizing that although we may have worked for said “cheese” there is no guarantee that it will remain there. But suddenly our cheese is gone! We could remain in the Hem stage, but look at where it got the characters. They remained in the cheeseless station for so long they were starving to death, but they were not willing to change their behavior and face the fact that the cheese was gone. They tried to take the easy way out by punching a hole in the wall with a pickaxe and hammer, but that only resulted in precious energy being wasted.

By the time Haw decided to make a change his family was in shambles and he was considerably unfit for maze running. He had not been prepared for the change. Nevertheless, he looked back at his behavior with Hem and he could only laugh at its stupidity. For example, why hadn’t he noticed that the cheese pile was steadily getting smaller? Why hadn’t he followed Sniff and Scurry? Why did he continue going to the cheeseless station day after day as if by some miracle things would be different? Why did he let his fear overrule what he knew needed to be done? He could’ve gotten angry about his previous behavior, but his ability to laugh about it allowed him to move on. So then, we are in the Haw stage when we can look back and laugh at our behavior.
We are in the Sniff stage when we begin actively looking for opportunities to find new cheese. This stage goes in tandem with the Scurry stage. We Sniff out the opportunity and Scurry towards it, but we don’t know if said opportunity will be a dead end or not. If it is a dead end then it is up to us to again Sniff out a new opportunity and Scurry towards it. Eventually we will find ourselves with a store house of new cheese.

The maze in which the mice and people run is a metaphor for life and the cheese can be anything, whether it is a happy family, a nice house, a great job. The point is the people who are running in the maze decide for themselves what the cheese will represent.

And now a word about the tactics of our four characters. Sniff and Scurry, by virtue of their smaller brains and simpler lifestyle, just searched for cheese to eat. “The hard, nibbling kind that they liked, as mice often do”. They used a trial and error method to search for their cheese. By contrast, Hem and Haw, because they had larger brains, made a more complex matter of searching for the cheese that they liked. Finding the cheese with a capital C they thought would make them happy and successful. Here I see a problem. Rather than being a source of sustenance, a means to an end, as it were, for the humans, the cheese came to represent something more and came to provide something more. It came to represent success. Once they reached the cheese station they felt that they had arrived, that is why they were so against moving. By contrast, had the cheese represented something dynamic, as all of the things in our lives are, they might’ve been more prepared. Sniff and Scurry viewed the cheese as a finite, dynamic thing which could change at any moment. When it did, they were ready.

Application

After finishing my Bachelor’s degree I took one year off before going to graduate school. In that year my home life began to take an unsuspected nose dive in the form of my mother picking up an unsightly drug habit, entering my family into a mountain of debt and leaving a twenty-two year relationship. This was very hard for her significant other whose house I lived in. Having given her heart to my mother and spent so much time with her, she couldn’t bear the thought of her leaving. Couple that with the fact that we only had one steady income where we used to have two and you have the hallmarks of a cheeseless station.

I spent the summer and fall of that year trying to get my mother to see reason and trying to get her significant other to stop crying every night. No matter what I did nothing seemed to work. I could see the breaking apart of my family begin to have a detrimental effect on my health, but I was so secure in living at my parent’s house and experiencing the comfort that it provided me that I was not prepared to move from that situation.
I had failed to realize that my parent’s house was no longer a place of safety and comfort and had instead become a place that was draining my energy.

Now, two years after the big move, I have revisited the issue many times and asked what kept me in the same situation for so long. There were two things: 1. I wanted things to go back to how they had been before and 2. I was afraid of the idea of moving out on my own. I mean that I was quite terrified of not living with my parents.
In this instance I was much like Hem and Haw. I questioned fate and God about why things couldn’t simply return to the way they were. Who or what had changed my situation? I blamed everyone and I wanted them all to leave and let my family return to normal. I wanted my mother to get better, to quit the drugs and return to the job she had always loved. To me it didn’t seem that impossible. Maybe it was just around the corner. Maybe in a day or two it would be fine. Maybe with some prayer. Maybe with some confrontation. Maybe with some “silent treatment”. In truth, I felt entitled to a happy, healthy family and a secure household even though I really did nothing to make it that way. I entered and it was already set up, but now I was screaming “Who Moved My Cheese?”
In truth no one had moved it. Time had changed it and if I had been more astute I would’ve seen it coming. There was all sorts of writing on the wall that I paid no attention to.

Nevertheless, the dissolution of one’s family is no laughing matter, yet my fear of moving out was. I had all the support I needed to make the transition. I had people who were willing to make sure that I did not go hungry. I could have the place to myself free of arguments and other distractions that did not bode well for a graduate student. What was I so afraid of? Now I can sort of be like Haw and laugh at my behavior and this has taught me a lesson or two about taking chances.

Another shift is about to happen. I am about to make the transition from student to working professional and I am quite afraid. I will need to land a job before graduation if I want to keep living on my own. This is something that I know has been in the works for a while. I have been preparing for the shift by exploring the maze and making connections. I am still afraid of the idea of not being a student any more, but not so afraid that I am paralyzed.
One of the things I make sure to do is to look on the various job boards and see the type of person they are looking for. A lot of jobs in my profession require travel and I am working on that. In addition I am working on getting the necessary experience with the population I hope to work with. In this way I am sniffing out new opportunities and I am ready to scurry towards new cheese, wherever and whatever it may be.