Acquitted

“Well, hon, you were right.” J looked up from the computer and faced me. “They’ve acquitted her, just like you said they would.”

Now, I had not exactly said such a thing; I HAD said that I would not be surprised if they acquitted her, and that I would not be surprised if the jury convicted her. Either way seemed completely plausible in my mind. I have been leaning towards acquittal for a while, though, given that I do not think I could vote guilty on what I know of the prosecution’s case.

Nevertheless, far be it from me to correct my husband when he’s complimenting me, and telling me that I was right! It’s not like that happens all that often.

It’s all over the news, and will likely continue to be so for the next several days (or weeks, or months, or shoot, will she be the next OJ Simpson?). I almost feel bad about contributing to the hoopla, despite the fact that my personal blog pales in comparison to the special analysis and 24 hour trial coverage I see on cable.

Yet, here I am, talking about Casey Anthony, and contributing to the mess.

I think this would be an excellent time to let each of you know that I am not a pundit or legal expert. Just in case you were wondering. I wouldn’t want that type of animosity coming back at me any time soon.

I just have questions, like I imagine so many of us do. I can’t get the questions out of my mind. What really happened? Who knows? How did this progress? If someone knew something was wrong, when did they know it? Where will all of this end up? Of course, the biggest question is: Why?

I haven’t gone as far as to watch live trial proceedings, or anything along those lines, but I have more than my fair share of tracking the story in the news. This has led to my often being disgusted during the past few weeks, and when I ask myself, “Why are you still paying attention to this?” I have to answer myself with another question, of sorts, “Why did this happen?”

I think this is what pulls the vast majority of us in to stories such as these—the question, “Why?” We need to be able to make sense of our world. It’s more than the fact that she was a beautiful little girl, or the stories are so fantastically absurd. When it’s not Casey Anthony, it’s a serial killer, or someone with deep-seated psychological issues, or any number of other individuals we do not understand. It’s trying to understand why bad things happen, to make meaning of something so meaningless, to comprehend what occurred so that it might never have the chance to happen again.

In my trusty thesaurus (it sits in a place of reverence on my desk), one of the synonyms listed for ‘acquitted’ is ‘in the clear’. It struck a chord in me when I read over the entry. When I read those three words—‘in the clear’, the free association part of my mind popped up with, “to be clear of it.” That’s what I need to be—clear of it. I have to let it go. I don’t think we will ever know why (in this particular case, that is), and I think that the larger questions of ‘why’ (on the macro level) are quite a ways off. We cannot tell what bad things might happen to the good people in our lives, and we cannot foresee an impending injustice or even a glitch in our meticulous plans. Sometimes there’s no way to even see the small blip in our path. As much as we may not like it, the uncertainty is something we must live with. As much as we may so desperately crave to make sense of this whole case, I do not believe that this will be forthcoming, either.  

Therefore, I let it go. To be clear of it.