Hello, this is Errol Strider.
It's May 17th, 2026.
Gosh, I remember when it was like May 16th.
Remember that?
How are you doing tonight?
People always ask me, how are you doing?
And I never say actually how I'm doing.
I always kind of take advantage of the moments.
Someone's actually asking about me.
And the other day, a young man said, why don't you ever say good when you're asked how you're
doing?
Well, I didn't want to tell him that, well, I'm not doing so good.
But now, whatever I see him, I say good or well, or I don't bore him with my considerations
and my exceptions to the being good.
But be that as it may, I hope you are good or at least well off or at least, I don't
know, fair to, well, middling.
Anyway, each week I try and focus on some, hopefully insightful, even radical perspective
on the human condition.
And tonight, I want to focus on what I think is maybe the most critical call in human experience.
I know that sounds grandiose, but maybe when you hear it, if you don't agree with me,
you can well suggest something else.
The piece I'm going to share with you is called connectedness.
And it's really a call to get away from all the ways we separate ourselves and see if
we can find a way to join at a essential rudimentary level so that we can, well, improve the
human condition.
You heard it.
I wrote this piece in like 1981.
It was commissioned by the Association of Humanistic Psychology.
And it's gone through quite a number of iterations.
And this is the latest.
So I hope you will take it in.
I won't play it too fast, so you have a time to absorb and even assimilate some of the
phrases and images.
I really specialize in finding ways to put metaphors on our otherwise more cognitive
concepts.
Is that a way to say it?
Anyway, because I believe in metaphors, I believe that they have the power to not only
open us up, but by virtue of the way they interrupt our patterns of thinking to actually
help us shift our perspective into hopefully a more enlightened one.
That being said, here's connectedness.
We stand before and in the midst of each other as individuals carved out of the space, the
past, the bodies and experiences we have occupied during the storms and combs of our
existence.
Each with his or her own agenda, collections of dreams, ought tos, want tos and better
nots that reach for fulfillment, for survival, for selfness.
We face one another in separation, thinking that because we seem different, there's not
enough for each of us stranded on the outskirts of our being, looking for a passport to set
center as we ride our fickle feelings and our unquenchable yearnings for more, or something
else or less of that, anything but what is within?
Where we fear coming face to face, with the terror that the love we say we want, might
actually find us, and in that all-consuming embrace we might simply disappear.
But is our more or something else the same for each of us?
Do our dreams resonate or simply rebound in the dumb echoes of our isolation?
Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
Often at odds, variously in agreement, across meshing of goals and aspirations.
But parallel at least, though destined for convergence in the warp of space and the depletion
of time.
We face one another and search for a point to connect, some crisp focus that will draw
us into union.
We seek an indentation into ourselves and in-road into each other's souls, where somehow we
can invest one another with a practical vein of hope.
In this time of aching disillusionment, a viable avenue for growth together.
We are looking now here to connect, to find that place of agreement where we can truly
say yes to each other without compromise, knowing that we have given some of ourselves
away, but trusting that it will return, expanded from use, enriched from cross-breeding.
We are drawn into the vortex where yin meets yon.
The apex of a triangle where we can be male and female to each other, sensitive enough
to thrust, receptive enough to feel.
We look for the unwinding of that which keeps us apart, the unfolding of that which draws
us together.
And yet, we do walk in different rhythms, have different mouths to feed, different tastes,
methods, and concerns.
What then is our connection?
What is the convergent point that will shatter permeate our resistant membranes?
What is the non-violent way in which we can commingle, connect, and create?
Is it through the outer sharing of our beings, with our chants and touchings, ideas and
biases, or sex, page, size, or stories?
Or is it through sharing our nakedness, exposing where we at least want to be seen?
Is it in being so ruthlessly honest with ourselves in our process together, that we
redefine the depth of the word truth?
Is it in offering and receiving each other's pains, griefs, longings, and terrors, without
fear that we will be tainted with the same diseases or left with the same hunger?
Is it in acknowledging how we really feel about ourselves, though we want to appear
invulnerable and beyond the need for confession?
Is it in breaking down the shells we've created, protecting us from death at the hands
of union, the mouth of merger, the hollowness of infinity, and opening to the invitation
to trust, reaching tentatively between us, making it okay to reveal the candor of our
guts to admit our bafflements?
Can we find connection here as we face each other, by dropping away our indigestible past,
and abandoning ourselves through the rich, delicious, succulent present, where we can
truly discover the exquisiteness of ourselves, reflected in our plaintive eyes, just beyond
our gilts and our bulbous resentments?
Can we disrobe our chiffon separateness, strip fears crimped gaze, and plummet into each
other's resplendent worlds, there to find our connectedness, in the cross-currents of our innocence,
in the unendingness of our identity, in the humanness we know we are, in the divineness we long to be?
Okay, testing again, test 1-2, test 1-2, a little louder, a little brighter, hello, testing again, 1-2, 1-2-3-4, 5-6-7-8, that seems pretty good.
Let's see if we can unpack that piece a little bit.
Obviously, we're individuals, and our individuality is extraordinarily important.
Whatever else a God may be, or the wholeness of all reality, it's all one, it's all one beingness.
And I believe that the key to our, I want to say, we all are a part of that unending, undifferentiated reality,
and yet each of us is a distinctive part of it.
So how can that be? I remember back when I was living in Marin County, California, there are 22 towns of various size and quality,
and I realized if you were in an airplane looking at them from the top, you would see basically all one community.
There's no beginnings and ends anywhere.
And yet, if you drove around Marin, and even better, if you lived there, you would notice that each little community has a very distinctive personality.
And that's where I see a good example of how individuality and distinctiveness can emerge in the middle of that from another perspective, a broader, in this case, higher perspective, it's all one.
And I believe that one of the main, if not the main, source of human travail is in the mistaken belief that we are separate from one another,
which in turn is what motivated me to create this piece and to explore all the different aspects of it.
One thing you may have noticed as you listen to it is that if we allowed ourselves to simply drop into and abide in that wholeness,
there's the sense that we would be lost. I experience that all the time.
When I get still and I notice the resistance to surrendering into the oneness of being.
By the way, when I use the term surrender, I see surrender is not about giving up. It's about letting go.
Letting go of all the false notions that, as I pointed out, we are separate from one another.
And in fact, as the poem says, we face one another consciously or unconsciously, search for a point to connect.
And I think underneath all our efforts and our struggles and our travails, there is this deep binding need to be connected with the other.
And for anyone who's experienced love at any level, from filial love to erotic to agape love, and has touched into that,
it brings that joy and vitality to our life and our beingness.
So we certainly have the clue then that it is in the joining, in love, as love.
We begin to embody the state that is more truly who and what we are.
One image that occurred to me is that there is no fear is allowed inside the middle of a hug.
Okay, let's kind of move on a little bit. And then we can come back and see where else we're taken.
Martin Boober, the great Jewish philosopher in his book, Ayan Thou, said, all real living is meeting.
And that's just another way of reinforcing the idea of connectedness.
So I wrote this piece, the meeting. And it's a more comic perspective on the premise that, well, all real living is meeting.
So imagine these two characters, maybe kind of hoboish type, not a common word anymore, hobo, but they're basic people and they meet each other out on the streets or in a park.
And what you have is the following dialogue.
I'm miserable.
Oh, you mean this hobo that doesn't mean you're not living. Look at me. I'm miserable. But I'm not.
How can you be alive if you're miserable?
Well, I'm going to give obvious. And how is that?
Well, there is. Breathe it. We're functioning. We're moving. Stand up. Sit down. Pooping.
That's wrong.
That's the real living.
I want real living. More than standing up and sitting down and peeing and poping.
Why don't you try me? Me?
Yeah. Me. Coming together. Me.
Me. Me like me. Me like me. Me like me.
No. Me.
What's meeting?
It's about really being together.
Together? For real? Oh, no, no. I could not do that. No, no, no.
Unless you're talking about body share.
That's a different matter.
It's a matter matter.
Is that what you're talking about? Like body share?
Body sharing.
You know, the top bottom and the inner now.
It's not what I'm talking about.
Well, what does that mean?
It's a kind of meaning, but it has to do.
You just go back to being miserable.
What's that?
So, try me.
What did you say it was again?
It's about really being connected to the person you were there.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, connected. No, I could not do that.
I can't do that.
Sorry, I'm not going to get this.
No, wait, no. Let that be off. Off. Off. No.
Why not? Why not? Because I would like to join with somebody else.
You couldn't tell where I left off and they began.
You couldn't tell what you just was me.
Oh, let me just, uh, wait.
In order to know who you are, you have to stay separate from anybody else.
Yeah, you betcha. You know.
And I've got a lot of ways to do this.
There's plenty of space between me and everybody else.
I've got barriers. Nice, invisible barriers.
Nobody gets wise, but nobody gets a cross, all right?
They're over there. I'm over here.
They leave me alone. I leave them alone.
But if the invisible barriers don't work,
then I have a way to make them very visible, so they don't miss my point.
You get my point?
Oh, yeah, yeah.
And then if they get really close,
then I bring out my big guns.
I shame them, I blame them.
Yeah. I just compare myself.
They're better, they're better, they're better, they're more so metal.
Of course, as long as I compare myself.
I'll just take it.
Yeah, I do make these tapes. I come invisible.
Hey, you're miserable.
Hey, I'm invisible, but I'm happy.
You don't seem to need a wrecking barrier.
I mean, you're so busy wrecking your barrier,
you're like, you even exist and only in your barrier.
Yeah, I'm, yeah, a hot seat fence,
when I got the answer for that.
What's that?
I carry a mirror around with me.
I'm mirror.
That's all.
Every time I am tempted to forget myself,
we find a way to not happen very often.
I just look at a mirror.
I do something that makes me think of me,
and when I think of me,
I remind it, I exist.
Now, if I were to think about somebody else,
forget about it.
That is crazy.
Make it crazy, but it's normal.
Well, it makes it normal, but it makes it difficult.
Yeah, so what else is there?
It's me.
Not me.
No, no, no.
What would happen if you dropped two barriers?
Drop my barriers.
Is there a thing that would be nothing between us?
Um...
What would I be like to this?
I'd be honest.
What?
Oh, the others you could be thinking about,
but they're not thinking about you.
Oh, let me think about others.
Why don't we think about me?
Yeah, and that's why you are lonely.
I mean, if you all see him,
now you're trying to get one hand.
You mean it's like,
you're thinking about me,
and I'm thinking about you?
Mm-hmm.
I don't want to think about it.
Look, if I see you,
and you're seeing what I'm seeing,
what would you be seeing?
We let it in.
They've once seen you,
and you're seeing what I'm seeing.
What would you be seeing?
Me?
That's how you know you're there.
Yeah?
Yeah?
Yeah, once right?
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
But now we have some facts.
I don't know how to do it.
I don't know how to do it.
I don't know how to do it.
Don't do it too risky, thank you very much.
You want to be separate,
or you want to be alive?
Is that kind of like your money or your life?
Look, you know what?
I think that you think that the trouble in your barriers
and going into somebody else,
you're going to die.
Well, what would I...
No, it's like falling in love, only bad.
Baden?
Baden?
Okay, what makes you bad?
Because it don't quit, and it feels good.
As good as in and out.
Baden, now.
Baden, now.
Baden, now.
Was it last longer?
How much longer?
As long as it takes.
Oh, well, okay.
So, how do I do it?
Because it's not money or barriers.
How much money is that?
It's scary, boy.
Okay, how do I do that?
Well, think about me.
You're what I'm thinking about.
Okay.
Okay, what's that?
You.
Are you scary?
No, I'm not going to be scared of it.
What about you?
You're scary.
Hey, I'm not going to be scared of it.
I'm rosy.
Rosie, huh?
Okay, Rosie.
So, like, just say, it'll be me.
No, no, wait.
No.
I'm not going to be in your eye.
Both eyes.
Okay.
Both in your eyes.
And both in your eyes.
All right, all right, all right.
Okay.
Okay.
I'm scared.
Uh, no, I'm not scared of it.
I'm... I'm... I'm... I'm...
I'm a child.
Uh, and you're bad, Charlie?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm here too.
Yeah.
Good to meet you, Charlie.
Huh?
That's good to meet you too, Rosie.
Hm.
By the way, Charlie.
When we're meeting, we don't have to leave the in and out.
Out.
Out.
No, like, we can leave the in and out.
In?
Yeah.
That's what in the person, John, in your barriers, you can have the in and out, up and down, and hit the in between.
The whole answer, a lot.
Oh, I like that.
Now, that's what I call real living.
Like I said, Charlie, all we're living is we.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Between those two pieces, I hope you will be able to recognize the essential challenge to the human condition.
We get all caught up in the immediate problems, desires, perplexities, but often, if not most of the time,
overlook this fundamental call to meet and to transcend the illusion of separateness.
Yes, it's an illusion because we can't be separate.
So any behavior, attitude, belief that arises out of that belief is inherently incorrect.
So the question then becomes, what steps do we need to take to be able to make that shift?
What, in fact, is, as the old religious term said, is to repent, to go the other way, instead of going toward separation, to go toward union.
The first step is just to be aware and to start being conscious of how you or how we, I'm certainly amongst us, who do this, are coming from separation.
There are certain signals.
Do we compare ourselves to others?
Do we operate out of guilt?
Do we come out of shoulds?
Do we make ourselves better or worse, as the character in the meeting says?
It doesn't matter, as he says, as long as he feels separate.
Begin to see how these attitudes play out in your experience and in your life, and I think you'll be able to see how the urge to separation is very apparent.
And once you get there, then comes a willingness to let that go.
You don't have to let it go right away. That would be really asking a lot.
But you can ask yourself, and you have to be honest with yourself. That's another key component.
Am I willing to let that go?
Am I willing to see things differently?
And that willingness opens the door to allow the spirit of unity to begin to first draw you into unity of yourself and simultaneously draw you into unity with others, who are also coming out of most likely separation, but may or may not be aware that that's what's driving them.
And the more you and I can hold the space for the presence, the activity of unity, the easier it is for others to begin to recognize the quality of being that may not be apparent in their own lives.
That being said, I'd like to leave you with a poem that kind of sums up what we're after.
But before I do that, I want to encourage you to check out our website, R as at Rochelle Strider and myself. It's TheLaughingHeart.org.
And if you were touched by this experience and want to communicate with me, please send me an email at thelaughingheart.org at gmail.com.
I also have a substack. I love that concept, a substack.
Anyway, and that's under Errol Strider.
As well as a YouTube channel. Boy, that's a lot to remember. But if you find yourself on YouTube, look for Strider InnerTainment.
That being said, here's the love poem.
I cannot live out of love for only in love do I know myself.
When I join with another, my soul drives forward like the hard earnest thrust of love's embrace.
When I enter love, I come to know myself for in the eyes of my beloved, whether man, woman, child, or God,
I see my soul enhanced. And as my soul beams back to me, it brings with it another.
And myself is that much bigger for allowing too inside it.
Thank you for joining me. I hope this next period of your life is filled with joy and aliveness and some humor.
And we'll see you next time.