Post election cheese

Who Moved My Cheese? (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Depending on how you voted Tuesday, you are either happy or sad, elated or deflated, excited or disappointed. I don’t know anyone who is ambivalent. Perhaps you do, but I don’t. Everyone I know is either blissful or has a serious case of the blues.

One thing we all have in common, however, is that elections mark change and remind us that change is inevitable — one way or another. Change marches along as reliably as time. Whether it’s the fiscal cliff we are teetering on or the avalanche of new health care rules and regulations headed our way, or long-promised immigration reform, change comes to us all. It always does.

Elections, though, bring change into sharpened focus and make it feel more like the outcome of a football game. It is, after all, a competition with winners and losers. It is a showdown of sorts that requires all of us to look into the future and decide what kind of change we like best. Or in the delightful metaphor of author Spencer Johnson, which cheese we prefer.

Almost 15 years ago, a little book hit bookstores, Who Moved My Cheese, by Dr. Johnson. It is a fable for how we adapt to change. The story of Sniff and Scurry, two mice, and Hem and Haw, two people, addresses the responses one can make to change and the consequences of our choices.

Apparently, the book resonated with many people. It shot up the New York Times bestseller list and stayed there for five years. Some businesses made it required reading. Others criticized it for being too simplistic.

But sometimes simple is effective. And in this case, simple makes sense. No matter which side of the election you stood on, we are all required to adapt, to move on. Hard as that seems sometimes, it’s true. And if you don’t like the outcome, you have to ask yourself: What can I do to change the future? Even an election with definitive outcomes does not erase the possibility of other changes. And an election is only one change. It has ramifications, yes, but it is one change among billions.

Elections mark a spot in time, a change with consequences, but the nature of change is that few things are so permanent that they cannot be moved, improved, altered, bettered or recast. Change is as mobile, flexible and malleable as we choose to make it.

So if your cheese was moved or changed or wrapped or hidden, so be it. Now, what are you going to do about it?

And if this cheese won’t do, check out Grilled Cheese Mania, a new Harrisonburg business. You can find them on Facebook and on Route 42.

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