A wise person said “The only constant is change”.  In a book titled Futureshock written fifty years ago (to be reviewed elsewhere on these pages) the author describes the accelerating rate of change in the technological world.

This has hurtled faster in the 21^st Century than hitherto, faster in the 20^th Century than during the preceding period of the Industrial Revolution, and so forth. We are experiencing in the present what economist Shoshana Zuboff calls a once-in-a-century paradigm shift. Recognise it or fall behind, she urges.

Sometimes a little book comes along that recognises something simple and profound and helps the reader to deal with events in the world. This little book can be read in one sitting.

It offers an oversight into four different character types. Many of us will identify with the “stuck” character, fearful of embracing change, looking for security, and reacting counter-productively. This attitude provokes a poor adaptation to the inevitability of change.

How many are medicated by doctors to deal with this poor adaptation? Or self-medicate with alcohol or more illegally, recreational drugs? Who’d have thought a little book could be as effective?

Not that all change is good. Going beyond the present book’s scope nevertheless urges one to monitor the quality of change. Dr Spencer Johnson has written a subsequent book (one that I will read) which appears to encourage a deeper absorption in “The Present”.

The 94 pages of Who Moved My Cheese divide into three sections, a preface, the story and a the report of a discussion following the story. Within the subsequent discussion a character called Becky recounts, “if we had all enjoyed this cheese story together over a cup of hot chocolate, we could have saved …a lot of stress”.