Fellow Toastmasters, toastees and toastettes, and other fruit spreaders and jammers,

In regard to moving into 2001, I am operating by the Chinese calendar and the Year of the Dragon will be a dragging on no more.  I am waiting for the Year of the Snake to slither its way in.  Although I would rather delay my comments about 2001 until the real New Year arrives, in deference to our eminent association, I just have a small comment: (various irrelevancies rattled off in Cantonese):

All About Nothing  (5-7 min)

Well, today I'm talking All About Nothing.  I am happy that I'm not pressured to talk about something significant.  I'm grateful that I can just talk, about myself. in the company of receptive individuals so as to do without seeing a professional like myself.

You may think that I'm fooling when I say that I've spent a lot of my life trying to be nothing.  The problem is that I've been too successful at it.

You could say that it started somewhere in the ?70's when I was seduced into the enlightenment gig glamorized by the series of adventures written by Carlos Castenedas about a Mexican brujo, sorcerer, named Don Juan, no connection with another hero of mine.  Among various practices that included the use of hallucinogenic plants, one directive by Don Juan included erasing one's personal history.  I was particularly dedicated to this back then: I did not want to have photos taken of myself, I did not want to keep photos taken of myself, I gave very little attachment to what happened in my life.  I watched my past life just fad away, day to day, and focused on what was happening now.

Castenedas was later reinforced by the self-styled guru Baba Ram Dass.  Ram Dass, formerly Richard Alpert, was a Harvard psychologist and comrade to Dr. Timothy Leary.  It's funny that a friend of my wife's sent her a tape recently by Ram Dass.  I idolized him in the good old days and I had no trouble digging up some tapes I had of him from 1976.  Funny, in the twenty some years that have passed, he's pumping out the same message.  I won't go into all the details, because this talk is about nothing, but he'd say things like: you and I really are just empty spacesuits with no one home inside, except we pretend that someone is in there.  His basic message is that we take ourselves a bit too seriously and that it's OK to get caught up in the melodrama, but we must remember the soap opera is a small part of all there is.

What brought things in contrast recently is my reading of Steven King's book called "On Writing".  It isn't exactly an autobiography, but in it, and I haven't finished it yet, he begins with a series of vignettes from his life.  I can tell you he writes with such detail that I find it incredible; for example, he remembers where his record player was sitting in his room in 1968 and which records he listened to.  Compared to his memory and ability to establish an identity of himself, I am simply Casper the Friendly Ghost pretending to be Dr. Yuen.  I wish I could say I was a regular person, but I guess that is not my karma.

I have dedicated my life to discover those things that are eternal and not just ephemeral.  They say that change is the only constant, but I'm not looking at the change, I'm focusing on what that constant is.  It seems that the constant turns out to be "nothing" because it's not something that can be talked about easily.

The Tao Te Ching, that famous book by Lao Tze, says that the Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao..He who knows does not say..He who says, does not know..I'm trying to be the guy who doesn't say..but as you can see by this speech, I'm not doing a very good job.

What I'd rather do is standup comedy, or at least a humorous speech, and not say a whole lot of any import.  Just getting a laugh would be sufficient for me.  Toastmasters is a great way to do just that.  Aren't we here to have some fun under the guise of something purposeful? (clear throat)

Forgive me that I have not been particularly inspired to say anything with punch in this speech.  Maybe it's a masculine phase I'm going through, a pause..a man-0-pause.  I'm taking a pause from standing on a soapbox.  In the ?80's, I had created a program called Natural Success in which I applied 5 Natural Success Principles in 5 Areas of Life.  I was giving lectures at a fitness center, 5 X 5, means about 25 lectures.  I suppose I could repeat some of those lectures with you, but I'd be bored and that's past and gotta erase personal history.  Anyway Toastmasters is part of my transition from gathering stuff to say and moving onto to figuring how to say it.  What better theme for this speech than "Show what you mean" because although words can be associated with body expressions, in themselves, gestures go beyond words..of course, there's you (gesture) and me (gesture) and being together (gesture), and I could throw in a little taichi stuff (gesture), or I could go free form (gesture).  Maybe some of you might have thought I would take advantage of this chance to talk about taichi, but I do that all the time and if you want to see taichi, then please come to my taichi class.

So you see that I have nothing to talk about.  As a psychiatrist, we are traditionally trained not to talk too much about ourselves anyway.  We're supposed to elicit information about our clients instead.  Well, in the midst of my preparation for this speech, my wife's uncle dies of a massive heart attack yesterday.  I'm in the middle of getting serious about Toastmasters and then I'm reminded that maybe there's something more important.  Nah! nothing's more important than Toastmasters, nothing is more important because nothing is the topic of my speech.  I'm worried about getting a reputation in this group for talking about death and nothingness.  I'm trying not to, but feel forced to.  But maybe it's not about my situation in life.  Maybe it's about all of our situations in life. 

It's nothing but maybe we could show a little more affection to those that we love because we may not see them tomorrow.  But who am I to tell you anything, I'm just a nobody.