Sometime last year I read Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson. It’s a short read focused on a singular keen reminder of life’s simple truth: change is inevitable. Some people embrace change much like the mice in the book. Others avoid it at all costs like the little people in the book. I tend to either avoid change entirely or lean way into it, using it as a way to bring me out of a funk. When it comes to change, I have a hard time with a grayscale — it’s black or it’s white, it’s zero change or all the change.
In many ways avoiding change works for me. I tell myself that what I’m doing works so what’s the point of evolving. If the routine I’ve carrying for twelve years has taken me safely to-and-fro work, kept me mostly unharmed and given me so many moments of joy with my wife and kid, isn’t that enough? The same path to the train, lunch on a loop and a steady dose of my favorite podcasts keep me riding the waves of life. But here’s the thing. Routine is safe and, sometimes, safe translates into boring. So, while much of the time I cling to what feels safe, normal and comfortable, there are many other times when I throw myself into a different world, even if it doesn’t necessary mean an improved world.
That book I was talking about earlier — the little people avoid the realities of life for so long that they end up with no cheese, very hungry and very angry. On the flip side, the mice expected life to evolve, they knew the cheese wouldn’t last forever and their instincts pushed them to keep searching the maze for a new stash of food. I’m not entirely sure that my sort of willingness to change jives with those mice. Their basic urge to survive thrusted them into different corners of their maze. I explore the maze mostly to change my vantage point. To mix things up enough to feel like I’m progressing, maybe more than I actually am. Right or wrong, healthy or destructive, that’s how things shake out for me at this moment in time.
As my thirties progress I’ll think more about these mice and these tiny people. I hope to evolve into the kind of person that reacts to change as only a mouse can, excited and ready for more. The tiny people? They ate a whole lot of cheese and then phoned in the rest of their lives. I’m going to avoid that path.
-Niral
misterniral@gmail.com
Mr. Niral Rambles 