Procrastination may have brought about the downfall of Hamlet, but had the Danish prince had access to You Tube, it’s possible that he would have gained insight much more quickly.

An irritating, parasitic little shit. (picture credit: http://www.02vavara.wordpress.com)

He could have kicked back and watched this clip for example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_sfnQDr1-o.

I’ve been watching it on a loop for the past half-an-hour whilst I muster up the will-power to start on some work.

As well as being an (arguably quite amusing) distraction, the more I watch, the more it makes sense as a representation of my relationship with grief.

Demonstrated through the medium of small mammals.

Bear with me on this one.

In case there’s any doubt – I’m the pig, grief’s the monkey. Even when the monkey loses his grip and falls off, note how he pursues the hapless piglet until he is able to mount once more. He’s relentless. Unforgiving. He probably has his dirty simian fingernails sunk deep into the pig’s weary flesh.

In short, he’s an irritating, parasitic little shit.

Interestingly though, the pig takes it all in his stride. He skitters about, snuffles in the muck, takes a lettuce leaf from the hand of an onlooker. He’s learned to get on with life in spite of the 40lb barnacle on his back and a ludicrous soundtrack.

Grief is a shape-shifter. To some, it’s a cell-mate with whom they are doomed to life imprisonment. To others it’s a gremlin. Some don’t acknowledge it at all, but still it lurks, in some shady corner, behind the filing cabinet. To me it’s a plane wreck, a millstone round my neck, and now it appears as a video on You Tube.

Now I’m off to find meaning in something else completely futile. Which is a pain, because I’ve got so much work to do.