Who moved my Cheese?

It is happening and happening here and there. Happens with almost all the living creatures. It is the habit of teaching. This habit as like other habits, has taken a extensive form with human beings. 

A lot said through word of mouth, cave carvings, leaf writings, books and electronic devices. The topic ranged from religion, culture, death etc. etc. 

Books or for that matter any piece of information become accepted if they are more relevant to the period they are published. There are some books that remained vivid and relevant throughout the changing life style and culture of people. Books like Mahabarath, Upanishads, and teachings of Socrates etc. These books touched the basic core of life i.e. they taught how to live and adapt to the changing nature of life on earth. 

This basic subject ‘Change’ has interested many modern authors and there are lots of books have been published in recent times and one such book is ‘Who moved my cheese?’ by Dr. John Spencer.

The book tries to portray how life turns out in a different way than one normally thinks and how changing with life is beneficial and makes us happy. The message of change is conveyed through a store discussed by a group of high school classmates during their get together. The story discussed by them has four characters – Sniff, Scurry, Hem and Haw. Sniff and Scurry are little mice and doesn’t possess great reasoning powers. Hem & Haw are small little beings who are like people today. All four lived near a maze and depended up the cheese in the maze for their food. For them having cheese is what life is about. They daily get up in the morning and start searching for cheese in the maze. They finally found cheese in their own way. 

The author tries to compare the story with the real world as below -

Maze – World (more specifically the materialistic world)

Cheese – Prosperity, wealth, power, fame etc.

Hem, Haw – Ordinary people in this materialistic world

Sniff, Scurry – the author wants people to learn from these characters (no comparison to the real world)

Once they found cheese Hem and Haw are lethargic and stopped working hard. They become lazy. Through this the author says people normally work hard to be prosperous and once they got into a good position, people become lethargic and start enjoying their position.

All of a sudden one day the cheese was not there in the regular place and all four of them are surprised and worried. Sniff & Scurry realized that they need to find new cheese instead worrying. Hem and Haw were not able to believe that their cheese was moved. They were deeply attached to the cheese that they couldn’t able to digest the fact that their cheese was moved. 

Here the author draws analogy how changing circumstances erodes people’s prosperity and how people were not able to moved ahead because of emotional sufferings.

We can also find similar tone in the teaching of Buddha and Mahabharath, for that matter entire Indian philosophy, which tells that the suffering of human beings come from the fact that they are emotional beings. They say the humans are mired in the pool of worldly attachments and this is the only hurdle in the path toward enlightenment. The emotional darkness instills fear in the mortal beings.

Coming back to the story, Sniff and Scurry didn’t give much thought to who, how or where the cheese was moved? Their concentration was on finding new cheese and finally they got new one. On the other hand, Hem and Haw were still worried about the old cheese and started thinking about how, who and where the cheese was moved. They thought their life become terrible because someone has moved their cheese.

This actually brings to the analogy of how people react to the changes in their life. There was a saying “Life is driven not by what happens to you rather by how you react to life’s happenings”. The perfect example to this would be when Steve Job was fired by Apple Computer’s board, initially he was worried but later he realized that the weight of success that he had in Apple was gone. He became light headed and started thinking about his core strength & what he loved to do. He then started a company called Next and then Pixar animations. 

Coming to the story, earlier Sniff and Scurry enjoyed the cheese but at the same time they are conscious about the changes in the size of the cheese. So, when cheese was moved, they are not surprised. The author wants readers to learn this nature of Sniff & Scurry and look for changes and opportunities in the environment around us.  Most of the companies nowadays have separate team for Change Management and also, they look continuously for opportunities in their environment. 

Mean while, Hem understood that simply wasting time worrying about the old cheese was not correct. So, he moved on to find new cheese while Haw still trying to find the reason for the loss of old cheese. Hem was afraid about whether there would be any cheese left in the maze. He learnt throughout the entire path of finding new cheese. Today most people may be classified as Hem. There was this line quoted in the book –“The quicker you let go off he old cheese the sooner you can enjoy the new one”. Finally he arrived at the new cheese factory, where he found Sniff and Scurry. But this time he became cautious of changes in the cheese size.

There is another parallel saying “The ship has to leave the shore to find new lands”.  In Buddha’s teaching, he says sorrow and happiness are like day and night. One should know to live aloof of these two things. In the story of Mahabarath, Krishna tells Arjun to leave the fear of extinction and fight for good cause. 

Some examples for Changing along with the change: 

    1.    Ambassador was in good position until Maruthi came into the industry. Maruthi kept changing with the customer needs while Ambassador remained with their old design. 

    2.    The Indian PSUs faced stiff competition from private sector in the post liberalization era, which they never faced earlier. The PSUs that have changed their attitude and competed have survived but the once remained unchanged have become a NPA for the Government.

    3.    Life of Lance Armstrong would stand as a best example of this. 

    4.    The character showed by the Mumbaikars after the November 26 Mumbai attacks was another show of moving with the change. They got back to normal life so soon that the whole world was stunned by this character.

Example for smelling the cheese often to realize the change –

   1.    The FED in US has not realized the bubble in the mortgage industry and didn’t regulate the industry well which caused the Global economic turmoil.

   2.    In India, ULIPs become very famous not only because of its product returns but also, it was pushed by the agents because it gave them higher commissions. Seeing the misspelling of ULIPs, SEBI brought strict regulation in selling ULIPs.

If you see a regular school going kid, if he misses the bus, he would talk about it throughout the day – this is change from a normal routine.

We look forward for Festivals. They make us happy. They make a change in the regular life.

We drop in for a coffee as soon as we saw a new coffee shop in our area. This is a change from older one.

In a way change is required for all to refresh ourselves. But only thing is we are not ready to change or come out of comfort zone. The evolution theory says those that changes with the environment lives and others perish. Change is an integral part of life on earth.