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The Cheese Stands Alone

© Faith Hamby

Who Moved My Cheese? details a simple story of two mice, Sniff and Scurry, and two littlepeople named Hem and Haw, who must navigate a "maze" to find the "cheese" they require to survive and thrive. Both the mice and the littlepeople soon find their "cheese." But not until the "cheese" is taken away from them does Spencer Johnson, co-author of The One Minute Manager, begin his lesson in change.

The story itself is threaded out as a larger metaphor for change. The "cheese" that the four characters run in search of is the happiness everyone seeks, whether that happiness is more money, a better job or security. And the "maze" in which the four characters run is reminiscent of the places we look for happiness: our job, our partner, our friends or our family. The actions of the characters within the "maze" and their attitudes about the "cheese" then become commentary on our own ideas about happiness and change.

Early in his story, Johnson points out the different views the mice, which are characterized as more intuitive, and the littlepeople, who are characterized as small humans with intellectual and emotional baggage, have of "cheese." Both want "cheese." And both find "cheese." But it is only the littlepeople who become dependent on the "cheese" itself. Who build their lives and their happiness around their "cheese." Thus, when the littlepeople find that their "cheese" has moved, their lives are shattered. Whereas, the mice simply get up and go looking for new "cheese."

In the second half of the story, Johnson goes a step further to differentiate between the two littlepeople, Hem and Haw. Hem becomes representative of those who refuse to see change and accept change and move on. Haw, on the other hand, becomes our guide through the "maze" of change. As Haw learns lessons about change, he writes them on the wall of the "maze," which becomes the proverbial "writing on the wall" for Hem as well as the reader.

The story can become overly simplistic until you realize that what Johnson is providing in his parable is concrete language with which to discuss an abstract concept such as change--or happiness for that matter. According to Johnson, we are all looking for happiness, or "cheese," and when we find it, we hoard it, refusing to notice when it no longer makes us happy until, in fact, it disappears and we find ourselves devastated by its absence.