Reordering my brain after our catastrophic national election has proven trickier than I might have foreseen. I’m a fan of emotional self-sufficiency, if one can manage it. “Sadness is not our fate but our fault” and “Right yourself by writing yourself” are among the bromidic sticks with which I whack myself back to equanimity in a doleful hour. Anguish is sometimes pathological, a sickness for which drugs and therapy are prescribed. You can’t bark your way out of a depression and if you loiter there too long, bad might lead to worse: I know from experience. But most prolonged sadness is self-indulgent, self-important, and as noxious to neighbors as a fart in church. I agree with Hamlet’s new stepfather (and lifelong uncle):

Shakespeare, I’m convinced, also agrees with Claudius, which provides us a glimpse of the poet’s genius, for Claudius is the villain of the tale.

Shooing sorrow is easier said than done. In 1969, in a famous book, Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross posited five stages of grief – denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance – which became commonplaces of psychiatry. Recently, another “grief expert” added “shock” and “testing” to the list. Who can doubt some ambitious healer will one day lengthen the list without much enhancing our understanding. The point is, as Claudius asserts more eloquently, grief is a process common to all, and one can either get on with it or “persever in obstinate condolement.”

I’m all for getting on with it; but having whisked past shock and denial this go-round, I’m getting stuck on anger. My anger is equal opportunity, encompassing most Americans, me included. How could we have made such a botch? How can allegedly educated Americans have permitted the corruption of the niftiest system of governance ever devised? How could voters have voted so negligently? How could I – the I in we – have permitted it? Parents of child-killers are being prosecuted as accessories to murder: so should we all be indicted for crucifying self-government. As T.S. Eliot groaned, “After such knowledge, what forgiveness!” (I substitute an exclamation point for a question mark for emphasis.)

My anger lights on those who excuse themselves by blaming others. It was Elon Musk’s or Kamala’s or AOC’s or Biden’s or the media’s or who knows whose fault. Wrong. It was all our fault: if we didn’t vote or holler or contribute or raise the roof or throw ourselves in front of the train, in howling hindsight we should have. No mercy! Only self-flagellation is awkward and unproductive. Enough perseverating, Carlino, time to hustle myself past anger through bargaining, depression and acceptance lickety-split. Why waste zest!

I’m trying, as you can see, cracking my handy sayings, pulling up my socks, seeking where best to invest my remaining strength. That, in my reading, is what Hamlet, the play, is all about. Shakespeare tumbled into a terrible depression circa 1599. He told us about it in his sonnets and elsewhere. He righted himself by writing… Hamlet. I do not read Hamlet as a tragedy but a triumphant reclamation of sanity and purpose. Yes, the Prince dies young, but he dies calmly, bravely, generously, eloquently, having rescued his people from a vile and malevolent misleader. You can’t do better than that.