Who Moved My Cheese?

Cheese is one of my favourite food in the world. I have to have my cheese in my macaroni, my pasta, my pizza, and not to mention cheese cake, baked cheese rice, cheesel potato chips...practically i need to have cheese in most of my food! Whether melted on a toasted bread, folded in the cake ingredients, sprinkled on my pasta or just eaten the way it is...kudos to the genius who discovered cheese. There are also many cheese in the world..the more familiar ones are parmesan cheese, blue cheese and many many more. Its just such a cheesy sensational delight!
Recently, i read a book titled "Who Moved My Cheese?" by Dr Spencer Johnson which is one of the most best-selling book author in the world. Nope, i did not read this book to quit my cravings for cheese or anything. If anything else, this book has nothing to do with cheese per se, it only uses cheese as a metaphor for the object we want most in our life...whether it is money, health, career, love and happiness. This story is a very simple but very interesting story that even schoolchildren could understand and adults could appreciate. The interesting part about this book is that the cheese could represent any part of life you want it to. While reading this book, everyone can have a different interpretation of the story and 'the cheese' means different things to different people. In the story, there are 4 characters named "Sniff" and "Scurry" which are mice looking for their cheese in the maze, and "Haw" and "Hem" who are Littlepeople (they represent human but they are small in size...equalvalent to their mice counterparts). All four characters run around the maze looking for their own special cheese. Just about anyone can relate to this story as you will have a special cheese that is close to your heart. Everyone can identify with the characters in the story as they will tend to see a little of each characters within themselves. Either they are like "Sniff", "Scurry", "Haw" or "Hem" or sometimes there is a little of each character in us. Which makes this story interesting and easy to identify and relate to. "Sniff" is a character who is able to smell out the cheese...just as a person who is quick to smell out the changes that goes through their lives, "Scurry" is a character who is quick to put things into action once certain changes had happened in the environment. "Haw" is a character who is initially hesitant and resist change in the beginning and did not want changes to happened, but is open minded enough to learn new things, act differently and adapt in time in the changed environment to succeed. "Hem" despise change, is resistant to it and refused to believe change can actually happened. This character will dwell on the problem and is in denial...hoping the situation will changed back to as it was before...as he is already comfortable with the way things were. I find that most people fall under the character of "Hem" who are comfortable and do not want change. As the saying goes..."If something is not broken, why try to fix it?". This story attempts to get people to adapt to changes..as changes do happened in our lives...many we have no control of as we can't predict the future. We are only 90% responsible for our lives as 90% is determined by our actions and how we react to the situation...10% is determined by the event..or changes that we have no control of. The only thing we have control of is how we react to the situation that makes the difference (The Rule of 90/10). All said...it is so easy to succumb to our emotions as we are only human. And emotions are what makes us human. Whether it is joy, happiness, sorrow or sadness...we cry and we laugh. However, this is a good book to help us cope with changes in our lives as the obstacles come along the way. It is not easy to change our emotions or the way we feel...but this book serve as a little helper to help us along the way, to shine the light a little brighter at the end of the dark tunnel, to uncomplicate the puzzle in our lives. It helps us along the way...while recognizing that we are human with emotions....and motivating and comforting us when we need it the most. Is life really that simple or are we in denial, thinking we should just change constantly? You decide.



Picture courtesy of http://www.whomovedmycheese.com/