Crone with a Machete ~ No Laughing Matter ...or is it ?
Narayan *
No Laughing Matter... Or Is It?
The crone is out. Machete in hand, vines beware. Today's target: everything you've convinced yourself matters that actually doesn't.
Nothing matters unless you choose it to matter. This is how we dismantle the matrix — the programs within ourselves, and the pervading debates, arguments, and battles we keep choosing to engage in like they're mandatory. So when I say it doesn't matter unless you make it matter, you have to decide: where in you does it matter, and why does it matter there? The why leads you to the part of self that makes it matter. That part of self leads you back to the moment it began to matter. Which leads you, finally, to the program — because you've been programmed, quietly and thoroughly, to make things matter that don't matter at all.
So then the real question: what does matter? Because things do matter. You have children — you take care of them, no negotiation. You have loved ones you want to spend time with, and you care for their wellbeing. That matters. We've got to pay rent. We've got to pay bills to remain, in good standing, a tenant of planet Earth. That matters. You have a job, or you build your own so you don't have to answer to someone else's clock. That matters too.
So how you go about your matters is what actually matters. When you choose what matters, how do you handle it — from scarcity, white-knuckled, or from abundance? Are you operating from fear and anger, or from something steadier? Are you working from a place of silent revenge, competing with the people around you in ways you wouldn't want named out loud, or are you creating your life from a more profound and enlightened place — from your own good nature, rather than a grudge you've dressed up as ambition?
Here's the deeper layer: we've been hijacked because we've been programmed, and the hijacking and the programming are the same operation wearing two names. So the real question isn't just what matters — it's whether your programs are running you, or whether you've dismantled enough of them to run from someplace more whole. Some people say you're only hijacked if you believe you're hijacked. Cute theory. Doesn't hold up. We've been hijacked. We've been lied to, repeatedly, by people with very good lighting and very bad intentions — and some of those liars live inside us now, running old scripts we never agreed to keep. That matters, because it shapes how we carry every other matter we're handling, and whether we're doing it from the program or from ourselves.
I like my matters as simple and uncomplicated as possible. So I choose wisely, and simplicity is my machete too — the straightforward route, the path of least resistance, cutting away anything that requires a committee meeting to justify itself. Because we can get obliterated by our matters. Something can matter so immensely it takes us apart completely. And in that demolition, what exactly got destroyed? A belief system? Something you cherished? A job? A version of yourself you'd mistaken for permanent?
I've been there. I've been destroyed by life more times than I care to itemize. And here's the part nobody warns you about: the destruction doesn't just take the thing that mattered — it takes the program in you that made it matter in the first place. That's the joke buried in the wreckage. The collapse does your cutting for you, if you let it.
I'm not going to tell you what matters. Not my job, and frankly, it wouldn't take. You have to decide for yourself. Do your matters lead you where you actually want to go, or are they distractions wearing a name tag that says PURPOSE? Do the things that matter bring you closer to your soul and your sovereignty, or drag you further from both? Do they build your health, or quietly co-author your demise?
Give real attention to your matters. Decide what matters and how it's taxing you — not just in time or money, but in spirit. Does what matters bring you suffering? Because that is suffering in your own suffering, a debt you keep re-signing for. So you have a choice not to make something matter. Ask: why does this matter to me? Is it serving my evolution, my wellness, my ability to live from my heart — or is it just noise wearing a costume?
I won't use the word happiness here. That's its own conversation, and it deserves better than a footnote. What I'm talking about is the matters you invite into your life, and whether they're actually serving you. What matters is whatever brings you closer to your evolution, your heart, your wellness, your capacity to love the people you've chosen to walk this life with.
Which brings me to something recent — and this is where the crone stops sharpening and starts swinging.
In a small town of eight thousand people, gossip doesn't travel, it ferments. It's the world's slowest game of telephone, except nobody's trying to get the message right — they're trying to get it juicier, and to be first to know it, so that when someone leans in and says "did you hear?" they get to say "yes" and one-up them. By the third porch and the fourth coffee shop, "I heard she said something once" has calcified into a whole mythology. Gossip is the vine; slander is what grows once it's had enough sun. What happened to me wasn't a vine anymore. It was slander, full grown, all over town. Let's be precise about it: that's not "just talk," that's assault with better manners, worse grammar amd flying monkeys.
No laughing matter, right? Except then it gets almost funny, the way dark things do when you refuse to let them flatten you — because this same person didn't just slander me. They imitate me. There's a special, twisted irony in someone trying to uproot your name with one hand while wearing it like a costume with the other. That's not flattery. That's flattery with a knife tucked behind its back, waiting to see if you'll turn around.
And here's the punchline, the one that writes itself: this is someone who was preaching vaccine mandates during COVID, and is now preaching their informed consent. Six years ago they'd have cheered you into a camp for saying no. Now they've found religion. Does that matter to me? It does. How much am I going to let it matter — that's the bigger question, and it's always the bigger question.
I want it to matter. But I can't let it matter, because they have their own journey, and they're going to learn it the harder way. I can't wait around for justice to arrive on my schedule. I can, however, enjoy the joke. A vine of gossip, grown into slander, topped off with an impersonation act and a late conversion to "informed consent" — that's not a redemption arc, that's cheap dinner theater, and I didn't even have to buy a ticket.
I laugh in the face of it, because they don't even see how absurd they are. And that's not a small-town affliction. I see it everywhere — the same blindness, dressed in different accents, running the same script. Nobody can see the joke when they're the punchline.
And yes — I'm aware I just aired a grievance in an essay about not letting things matter. Isn't that the whole point? The crone finds this hilarious, because we've reached a point where the absurdity of humanity has become downright hilarious in its own contradictions and its own hypocrisies.
And maybe that's the real title underneath the title: it is a laughing matter, and I mean that as medicine, not as a shrug. Humor is a balm. If you can laugh at something, you defuse it — you take the charge out of it before it calcifies into something heavier, something that sits in the body and festers instead of moving through. Not every wound needs deep, dark processing to be honored. Sometimes the heart processes through laughter, because the heart has a sense of humor too, and it's been waiting for permission to use it.
But choosing what matters doesn't mean pretending things don't matter. If they matter, you own it — and then the real question is what you do with it. It means deciding, on purpose, what you're going to do next. I could have buried this one. Small towns are excellent at burying things — everyone gets very good at smiling over what they know. But some things need to be aired into the light of day, or the vine just wins quietly, underground, forever. So instead I'm cutting it down in daylight, laughing while I do it, and calling it what it is: an example, not a wound.
And here's the deeper matter underneath it: how we show up in the world matters. Not because of what everybody thinks of us — we've arrived at this strange place where "I don't care" has become a virtue, where nobody cares about anything, and everybody's just mean and nasty and calls it authenticity. But how I treat people matters. How I show up in the world matters. We can brush that off like it doesn't count, like it's soft, like it's beneath the more serious business of not caring — but it does count. Call it karma if you want the tidy word for it. I call it: I can't be nasty to someone for the sake of being nasty and pretend the rest of humanity doesn't matter just because we don't agree. I can't pretend humanity doesn't matter because we don't align politically, or spiritually, or intellectually. It matters how we treat others — not because I need to be treated kindly in return, though sure, I do — but because I refuse to add my weight to what's already wrong in the world. That matters.
I was warned, before I moved to this small town, about the gossip. What I've actually learned in the years since is watching gossip mature into something with teeth — slander. And it's not just my small town of eight thousand. It's everywhere right now, this particular rot. Which is exactly why it matters how you treat people. It matters how you show up in the world. Especially when nobody's checking.
Back in 2020 and '21, it mattered to me that people who were smart enough, aware enough, awake enough, said no. That mattered to me deeply — which is why I built the detox protocols. That was a matter I took into my own hands, my contribution to a time that was bizarre and stayed bizarre, and shows no sign of sobering up. And on that one, let me be clear: I'm taking no prisoners. Some matters get the machete and some get mercy, and that one gets the machete.
But I have to choose what matters. That's the whole practice — not deciding once, but re-deciding, daily, with the machete in hand.
And so what matters, matters to me. That's where you decide how you live. If you meet me out in the world, it'll probably be a dress, a smile, some kindness, and a good joke on humanity — because someone has to keep count. Here's mine: we invented therapy and gossip in the same century, and we still can't decide which one we actually want.
Because here's the last matter, the one underneath all the others: if we don't start laughing, we're absolutely going to end up bawling. So I'll take the laughing. I'll take kindness over nastiness, humor over "I don't care," a good joke over another reason not to. That's not weakness. That's the choice. And it's clever, and it's delightful, and it's mine.
The crone approves. She's already moved on to the next vine — machete in one hand, and somehow, still, a smile.
