The Laughing Heart

The Laughing Heart with Errol Strider

Money, Matter, and the Sacred Shift From Having to Being

Money as Promise, Illusion, and Temptation

In this episode of The Laughing Heart, host Errol Strider explores money as both a practical necessity and a psychological illusion. He begins by questioning the familiar phrase that money is the root of all evil, suggesting instead that greed may be the deeper problem. For Errol, greed is not only about money, but about trying again and again to satisfy a need in a way that never truly works. The episode examines the assumptions people place on money: that it will provide security, pleasure, protection, freedom, prestige, amusement, or liberation.

“Money Talks” and the Bargain With More

Errol introduces a live performance piece titled “Money Talks,” in which his wife personifies money as Mora Money, while Errol plays a man named Henry Simpson who comes seeking security, pleasure, prestige, power, freedom, and protection from death. Through comic dialogue, Mora offers only partial guarantees: limited security, limited pleasure, the illusion of self-worth, the appearance of power, mobility instead of true freedom, and no help after death. The piece humorously exposes how money can seduce people with numbers, promises, and contracts while quietly excluding joy, love, service, presence, true worth, happiness, and spiritual freedom.

Measurable Value Versus Immeasurable Love

After the performance, Errol reflects on the difference between what money promises and what love offers. He shares one of his “wisdom nuggets,” contrasting money as the promise of measurable value with love as that which carries immeasurable value. He then tells a comic story about his cat being hospitalized and worrying over the bill, using the absurdity of a cat fretting about costs to highlight how deeply financial anxiety can shape human perception. Even life-and-death situations can become filtered through expense, debt, and what things cost.

Matter, Money, and What Really Matters

The episode continues with another performed piece titled “Matter and Money,” featuring two British characters, Lord and Lady Umbridge. Their dialogue plays with the circular logic of whether money matters because it buys matter, whether matter matters because it exists before money, and whether people matter more when they have money. The comic wordplay ultimately points toward a deeper question: if neither money nor possessions can fully define worth, what truly matters? The answer, gently offered through the piece, is relationship, presence, and the recognition that a person matters beyond money or material things.

Errol’s Personal Struggle With Money

Errol then turns inward and speaks candidly about his own lifelong tension around money. As an artist, he says he has rarely had the security of a guaranteed paycheck, which has contributed to tightness and caution around spending. He also reflects on childhood memories of waking up to his parents arguing about money, wondering whether that early conflict shaped his own stress and pain around finances. While he does not minimize the real importance of money, especially for people living in poverty or financial uncertainty, he presents his own struggle as part of the broader human challenge of learning how not to be ruled by money.

Things, Possession, and Seeing Beyond Need

Errol reads a poem titled “Things,” a dense poetic meditation on objects, perception, attachment, desire, and the possibility of seeing the world without possessiveness. The poem reframes things as more than utilities or possessions; they become “vibrant vagabonds,” partners in experience, and participants in a creative reality beyond old categories. Rather than treating objects as extensions of need, fear, or ownership, Errol invites listeners to see things freshly, with innocence and imagination, as part of a larger creative field.

From “It” to “Thou”

The episode closes by moving from money and matter into relationship. Errol reminds listeners that human beings are not things, but “whos,” and he draws on Martin Buber’s I and Thou to describe the difference between treating people as objects or means to an end and meeting them as sacred, personal beings. He suggests that joy and richness come from seeing others in the present moment as beautiful souls rather than as instruments of use. The episode ends with an invitation to continue exploring the mysteries of human experience through The Laughing Heart and Errol’s wider creative work.