People work hard for their Cheese, and everyone wishes that, once they’ve found what they want, those things will last forever. Eventually, though, everything changes: Despite our best efforts, relationships end, jobs disappear, resources dry up, and people find themselves adrift. Wishing that this weren’t true doesn’t prepare people for the time when the Cheese runs out. It’s much more effective and powerful to accept that good things are finite and to be prepared to find new resources when the old ones disappear.

In the Cheese story, Hem and Haw respond to the loss of their Cheese by hemming and hawing instead of sniffing out, and scurrying toward, a new source of Cheese as do the mice Sniff and Scurry. Hem and Haw waste precious days by resisting the truth, complaining about their predicament, and arguing that it’s not their fault. “They were becoming frustrated and angry and were blaming each other for the situation they were in” (40).

It might be true that someone else took their Cheese. It might even be true that this is unfair and wrong, and that other people owe them Cheese.