Cheese is a stand-in for anything you're chasing

Johnson deliberately keeps "cheese" undefined so each reader fills it in with their own version — a job, a relationship, a level of health, a comfortable routine. The point isn't the specific thing; it's that everyone organizes daily behavior around some cheese, and everyone eventually faces the moment when that particular cheese stops being where it used to be.

The maze, similarly, stands for whatever environment you're navigating to find that cheese — a company, a market, a family situation — which has its own logic and its own tendency to shift without asking permission first.

By keeping the metaphor abstract, the parable becomes reusable across totally different life situations, which is exactly why the phrase "who moved my cheese" survived as shorthand long after most people forgot the specific plot — it names a universal moment rather than a specific one.

Takeaway: name your own cheese honestly, because the parable only works once you know what yours is.