Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

One of the most challenging aspects to Buddhism for many people is the concept of NoSelf. I now realize for me it was one of the concepts that I quickly intuitively embraced. Why? I've been wondering. I think moving as a child made me pose in order to "fit in" and have friends. I kept my thoughts to myself and strove to be the clown and life of the party. When people bullied me I buried my nurt inside and on the surface made friends with those kids. When my father was working in the south, we were coached not to protest when we saw racism but to keep our mouths shut. My father was integrating plants and there were threats and he wanted to protect us. So I sat silent through Confederate flags, women having black women do all their work for them while my mother did her own work, and people discouraging us from interacting with Blacks. When we were in Calilfornia, a whole other shift occured, and I missed my friends in Virginia, but felt comfortable with the politics here. So I know I was shy/showoffy, funny/sad, smart/dumb, flirty/judgemental. I was whatever I felt I needed to be at the moment. My family never talked about feelings, so I was a mystery to myself and they were inscruitable to me. But I did know I wanted to be good and kind - I felt I had a Buddha nature, and that was my core: to treat others with kindness and myself as well. The rest, well, I wasn't KNOWN to others or even myself. When I think of my daughter who died, she appears so complex, that any descrption does not do her justice - it becomes a reduction and simplification of her complexity. I learned things about her during her dying and after her death I'd never known, just as after my parents died I learned crucial facts about their lives I hadn't known. They died young, like my daughter, so maybe there would have been revelations later, but really, who they were is mostly unknown to me. And who I am is also complex and contradictory and unexplainable. But our true nature, that I know. My parents loved us and tried their best. My daughter loved all her family and struggled with her feelings and associations around us. Her heart was noble, as was my parents' and brothers'. That is all that matters.