Granny Weatherwax On "What Might Have Been"

I think sometimes things you really need to know are hidden in the books you read.

I was reading Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett the other night, and this jumped right out at me. To set the scene, the Archchancellor of Unseen University (the wizarding university) is talking with Granny Weatherwax. (Witches all agree they don't have a leader... and they all agree the leader they don't have is Granny Weatherwax.) When they were both very young, he came to the Ramtops for a visit and fell in love with her (and her with him, it would seem), but it didn't work out.

“Did you ever wonder what life would have been like if you’d said yes?” said Ridcully.

“No.”

“I suppose we’d have settled down, had children, grandchildren, that sort of thing...”

Granny shrugged. It was the sort of thing romantic idiots said. But there was something in the air tonight...

“What about the fire?” she said.

“What fire?”

“Swept through our house just after we were married. Killed us both.”

“What fire? I don’t know anything about any fire?”

Granny turned around.

“Of course not! It didn't happen. But the point is, it might have happened. You can’t say ‘if this didn't happen then that would have happened’ because you don’t know everything that might have happened. You might think something’d be good, but for all you know it could have turned out horrible. You can’t say ‘if only I’d..’ because you could be wishing for anything. The point is, you'll never know. You’ve gone past. So there’s no use thinking about it. So I don’t."

--from Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett

I do love most everything that Granny says or does--even if I have a hard time actually applying what she says to my life.

In other news, today was the day all the kids bring in Valentine's stuff for the teachers. Not my best V.D. haul ever, but I didn't make out too poorly.

I thought about typing up a little explanation of my photo-of-me philosophy, but I'd been meaning to post that excerpt for a couple of days now, so I opted to do that. Plus, my photo-of-me philosophy is: There's no sense hiding a bad picture of you, since the odds are you don't look perfect every moment of the day, anyway.

Heck, I've gone whole decades not looking perfect. Many of them, actually.

That's sort of why I find the photoblog of me so funny--because I think I'm just photogenic enough to not cause people to turn to stone upon looking at me. The thought of having a photoblog dedicated to "look at me" cracks me up. I do wish more people would take pictures of me, however. I just keep forgetting to ask people to do it.

If only I'd started that photoblog earlier. Things would have been perfect...