Quien Se Ha Llevado Mi Queso? / Who Moved My Cheese?

Ediciones Urano

Chapter One

A Gathering
Chicago

    One sunny Sunday in Chicago, several formerclassmates, who were good friends in school,gathered for lunch, having attended their highschool reunion the night before. They wanted tohear more about what was happening in eachother's lives. After a good deal of kidding, and agood meal, they settled into an interesting conversation.

    Angela, who had been one of the most popularpeople in the class, said, "Life sure turned outdifferently than I thought it would when we werein school. A lot has changed."

    "It certainly has," Nathan echoed. They knewhe had gone into his family's business, which hadoperated pretty much the same and had been apart of the local community for as long as theycould remember. So, they were surprised whenhe seemed concerned. He asked, "But, have younoticed how we don't want to change when thingschange?"

    Carlos said, "I guess we resist changingbecause we' re afraid of change."

    "Carlos, you were Captain of the footballteam," Jessica said. "I never thought I'd hear yousay anything about being afraid!"

    They all laughed as they realized that althoughthey had gone off in different directions?fromworking at home to managing companies?theywere experiencing similar feelings.

    Everyone was trying to cope with theunexpected changes that were happening to themin recent years. And most admitted that they didnot know a good way to handle them.

    Then Michael said, "I used to be afraid ofchange. When a big change came along in ourbusiness, we didn't know what to do. So wedidn't adjust and we almost lost it.

    "That is," he continued, "until I heard a funnylittle story that changed everything."

    "How so?" Nathan asked.

    "Well, the story changed the way I looked atchange?from losing something to gainingsomething?and it showed me how to do it. Afterthat, things quickly improved?at work and in mylife.

    "At first I was annoyed with the obvioussimplicity of the story because it sounded likesomething we might have been told in school.

    "Then I realized I was really annoyed withmyself for not seeing the obvious and doing whatworks when things change.

    "When I realized the four characters in the storyrepresented the various parts of myself, I decidedwho I wanted to act like and I changed.

    "Later, I passed the story on to some people inour company and they passed it on to others, andsoon our business did much better, because mostof us adapted to change better. And like me, manypeople said it helped them in their personal lives.

    "However there were a few people who saidthey got nothing out of it. They either knew thelessons and were already living them, or, morecommonly, they thought they already knew everythingand didn't want to learn. They couldn't seewhy so many others were benefiting from it.

    "When one of our senior executives, who washaving difficulty adapting, said the story was awaste of his time, other people kidded him sayingthey knew which character he was in the story?meaningthe one who learned nothing new and didnot change."

    "What's the story?" Angela asked.

    "It's called Who Moved My Cheese?"

    The group laughed. "I think I like it already,"Carlos said. "Would you tell us the story? Maybewe can get something from it."

    "Sure," Michael replied. "I'd be happy to?itdoesn't take long." And so he began:

The Story of Who Moved My Cheese?

    Once, long ago in a land far away, therelived four little characters who ran through amaze looking for cheese to nourish them andmake them happy.

    Two were mice named "Sniff" and "Scurry"and two were littlepeople?beings who were assmall as mice but who looked and acted a lot likepeople today. Their names were "Hem" and"Haw."

    Due to their small size, it would be easy not tonotice what the four of them were doing. But ifyou looked closely enough, you could discoverthe most amazing things!

    Every day the mice and the littlepeople spenttime in the maze looking for their own specialcheese.

    The mice, Sniff and Scurry, possessing onlysimple rodent brains, but good instincts, searchedfor the hard nibbling cheese they liked, as miceoften do.

    The two littlepeople, Hem and Haw, used theirbrains, filled with many beliefs and emotions, tosearch for a very different kind of Cheese?witha capital C?which they believed would makethem feel happy and successful.

    As different as the mice and littlepeople were,they shared something in common: Everymorning, they each put on their jogging suits andrunning shoes, left their little homes, and racedout into the maze looking for their favoritecheese.

    The maze was a labyrinth of corridors andchambers, some containing delicious cheese. Butthere were also dark corners and blind alleysleading nowhere. It was an easy place for anyoneto get lost.

    However, for those who found their way, themaze held secrets that let them enjoy a better life.

    The mice, Sniff and Scurry, used the simpletrial-and-error method of finding cheese. They randown one corridor, and if it proved empty, theyturned and ran down another. They rememberedthe corridors that held no cheese and quickly wentinto new areas.

    Sniff would smell out the general direction ofthe cheese, using his great nose, and Scurry wouldrace ahead. They got lost, as you might expect,went off in the wrong direction and often bumpedinto walls. But after a while they found their way.

    Like the mice, the two littlepeople, Hem andHaw, also used their ability to think and learnfrom their past experiences. However, they reliedon their complex brains to develop more sophisticatedmethods of finding Cheese.

    Sometimes they did well, but at other timestheir powerful human beliefs and emotions tookover and clouded the way they looked at things. Itmade life in the maze more complicated andchallenging.

    Nonetheless, Sniff, Scurry, Hem and Haw alldiscovered, in their own way, what they werelooking for. They each found their own kind ofcheese one day at the end of one of the corridorsin Cheese Station C.

    Every morning after that, the mice and thelittlepeople dressed in their running gear andheaded over to Cheese Station C. It wasn't longbefore they each established their own routine.

    Sniff and Scurry continued to wake earlyevery day and race through the maze, alwaysfollowing the same route.

    When they arrived at their destination, themice took off their running shoes, tied themtogether and hung them around their necks?sothey could get to them quickly whenever theyneeded them again. Then they enjoyed the cheese.

    In the beginning Hem and Haw also racedtoward Cheese Station C every morning to enjoythe tasty new morsels that awaited them.

    But after a while, a different routine set in forthe littlepeople.

    Hem and Haw awoke each day a little later,dressed a little slower, and walked to CheeseStation C. After all, they knew where the Cheesewas now and how to get there.

    They had no idea where the Cheese camefrom, or who put it there. They just assumed itwould be there.

    As soon as Hem and Haw arrived at CheeseStation C each morning, they settled in and madethemselves at home. They hung up their joggingsuits, put away their running shoes and put ontheir slippers. They were becoming verycomfortable now that they had found the Cheese.

    "This is great," Hem said. "There's enoughCheese here to last us forever." The littlepeoplefelt happy and successful, and thought they werenow secure.

    It wasn't long before Hem and Haw regardedthe Cheese they found at Cheese Station C as theircheese. It was such a large store of Cheese thatthey eventually moved their homes to be closer toit, and built a social life around it.

    To make themselves feel more at home, Hemand Haw decorated the walls with sayings andeven drew pictures of Cheese around them whichmade them smile. One read:

Having Cheese
Makes You
Happy.

    Sometimes Hem and Haw would take theirfriends by to see their pile of Cheese at CheeseStation C, and point to it with pride, saying,"Pretty nice Cheese, huh?" Sometimes they sharedit with their friends and sometimes they didn't.

    "We deserve this Cheese," Hem said. "Wecertainly had to work long and hard enough tofind it." He picked up a nice fresh piece and ate it.

    Afterwards, Hem fell asleep, as he often did.

    Every night the littlepeople would waddlehome, full of Cheese, and every morning theywould confidently return for more.

    This went on for quite some time.

    After a while Hem's and Haw's confidencegrew into the arrogance of success. Soon theybecame so comfortable they didn't even noticewhat was happening.

    As time went on, Sniff and Scurry continuedtheir routine. They arrived early each morningand sniffed and scratched and scurried aroundCheese Station C, inspecting the area to see ifthere had been any changes from the day before.Then they would sit down to nibble on the cheese.

    One morning they arrived at Cheese Station Cand discovered there was no cheese.

    They weren't surprised. Since Sniff and Scurryhad noticed the supply of cheese had been gettingsmaller every day, they were prepared for theinevitable and knew instinctively what to do.

    They looked at each other, removed therunning shoes they had tied together and hungconveniently around their necks, put them ontheir feet and laced them up.

    The mice did not overanalyze things.

    To the mice, the problem and the answer wereboth simple. The situation at Cheese Station C hadchanged. So, Sniff and Scurry decided to change.

    They both looked out into the maze. ThenSniff lifted his nose, sniffed, and nodded toScurry, who took off running through the maze,while Sniff followed as fast as he could.

    They were quickly off in search of New Cheese.

    Later that same day, Hem and Haw arrived atCheese Station C. They had not been payingattention to the small changes that had been takingplace each day, so they took it for granted theirCheese would be there.

    They were unprepared for what they found.

    "What! No Cheese?" Hem yelled. He continuedyelling, "No Cheese? No Cheese?" as though if heshouted loud enough someone would put it back.

    "Who moved my Cheese?" he hollered.

    Finally, he put his hands on his hips, his faceturned red, and he screamed at the top of hisvoice, "It's not fair!"

    Haw just shook his head in disbelief. He, too,had counted on finding Cheese at Cheese StationC. He stood there for a long time, frozen withshock. He was just not ready for this.

    Hem was yelling something, but Haw didn'twant to hear it. He didn't want to deal with whatwas facing him, so he just tuned everything out.

    The littlepeople's behavior was not veryattractive or productive but it was understandable.

    Finding Cheese wasn't easy, and it meant agreat deal more to the littlepeople than just havingenough of it to eat every day.

    Finding Cheese was the littlepeople's way ofgetting what they thought they needed to behappy. They had their own ideas of what Cheesemeant to them, depending on their taste.

    For some, finding Cheese was having materialthings. For others it was enjoying good health, ordeveloping a spiritual sense of well-being.

    For Haw, Cheese just meant feeling safe,having a loving family someday, and living in acozy cottage on Cheddar Lane.

    To Hem, Cheese was becoming A Big Cheesein charge of others and owning a big house atopCamembert Hill.

    Because Cheese was important to them, the twolittlepeople spent a long time trying to decidewhat to do. All they could think of was to keeplooking around Cheeseless Station C to see if theCheese was really gone.

    While Sniff and Scurry had quickly moved on,Hem and Haw continued to hem and haw.

    They ranted and raved at the injustice of it all.Haw started to get depressed. What would happenif the Cheese wasn't there tomorrow? He hadmade future plans based on this Cheese.

    The littlepeople couldn't believe it. How couldthis have happened? No one had warned them. Itwasn't right. It was not the way things weresupposed to be.

    Hem and Haw went home that night hungryand discouraged. But before they left, Haw wroteon the wall:

The More Important

Your Cheese Is To You

The More You Want

To Hold On To It.


Continues...
Excerpted from Quien Se Ha Llevado Mi Queso? / Who Moved My Cheese?by Spencer Johnson Copyright © 2003 by Spencer Johnson. Excerpted by permission.
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