Recently, I came across a media feature about someone I used to know. This was someone I travelled with and spent enough time with to experience a side of them that perhaps most people would never get to see. The feature portrayed someone inspirational, grateful and reflective, someone who had been through immense difficulties and was now speaking publicly about appreciating life, relationships and simply being alive.
As I read it, I had a strangely uncomfortable reaction. It wasn’t because I begrudged this person their happiness or the support they were receiving. Given what they are going through, I genuinely hope they have people around them who love and support them. What made me uncomfortable was how difficult it was to reconcile the person being portrayed publicly with the person I once knew.
My experience of the relationship was very different. I found it increasingly exhausting and emotionally draining. There were behaviours that came across to me as self-absorbed and entitled, alongside what I perceived at the time as a strong need for attention and external validation. Eventually, after travelling together, the friendship fell apart.
This wasn’t someone I knew twenty years ago either. We travelled together and eventually fell out in 2022, only four years ago. Of course, four years can change someone tremendously. Difficult experiences can humble us, our priorities can shift and we can become more self-aware. Confronting something as profound as our own mortality can fundamentally change the way we see life and how we relate to the people around us. I would never claim that the person I knew in 2022 must be exactly the same person today.
At the same time, four years isn’t so long ago that I can dismiss my experience as some distant version of someone I knew when we were young and still figuring ourselves out. We were already grown adults with established personalities, values and ways of relating to other people. What I experienced was real, and it affected me enough that I ultimately decided I no longer wanted that friendship in my life.
Perhaps that is why seeing someone’s public persona celebrated can feel so jarring when you’ve experienced a very different version of them privately. It made me think about how little we actually know about the people we admire from afar. Social media, interviews and media features inevitably give us narratives. We see someone’s struggles, resilience, achievements and carefully articulated reflections. We see what they choose to share and what other people choose to highlight, but we don’t necessarily know what it feels like to actually have a relationship with that person.
We don’t see how someone behaves when they’re frustrated, how they treat people when nobody is watching, whether they listen or take accountability, or whether the people around them feel seen and heard. Those quieter aspects of a person’s character rarely make their way into an interview, a social media post or an inspirational story.
Perhaps the uncomfortable truth is that seemingly contradictory versions of someone can exist at the same time. A person can genuinely have suffered tremendously and still have been difficult to be around. They can genuinely feel grateful for their life while also craving validation. They can sincerely want to inspire others while still having significant blind spots in the way they relate to the people closest to them. Someone can be admirable in one context and deeply frustrating in another. Human beings are complicated like that.
I also have to acknowledge my own limitations. I cannot truly know what motivates another person’s public sharing. Something that looks performative to me may feel completely sincere to them, and something I interpret as a need for validation may simply be how they process and communicate their experiences. Most importantly, people can change. Maybe this person has changed tremendously since I knew them? Maybe confronting illness has altered their perspective in ways I cannot possibly understand? Maybe the person being portrayed today genuinely is different from the person I travelled with four years ago? I am willing to leave room for that possibility.
However, leaving room for someone’s growth does not require me to rewrite my own experience of them. Sometimes, when someone suffers greatly, grows, becomes successful or develops an inspirational public story, there can almost be an unspoken expectation that the people from their past should reassess their experiences with them. Yet someone’s growth in the present doesn’t make another person’s experience of their past behaviour any less real.
This is also why I’ve become much less impressed by visibility itself as I’ve gotten older. I’ve encountered people who are incredibly inspiring online but difficult to be close to, just as I’ve known people who barely speak about themselves publicly yet are some of the kindest, most thoughtful and generous people I’ve met. A public platform can tell us someone’s story, but it cannot give us a complete measure of their character.
Being inspirational isn’t necessarily the same thing as being emotionally healthy or self-aware. Having suffered doesn’t automatically make someone a better person, just as being celebrated publicly doesn’t mean that everyone who has known that person privately must recognise the same version of them. At the same time, having had a negative experience with someone doesn’t mean everything good they subsequently say or do must therefore be fake.
Perhaps maturity is learning to hold these seemingly contradictory truths without needing to destroy either one. I don’t need to conclude that everything someone says publicly is performative simply because I had a negative experience with them. Neither do I have to question my own judgment because the world is now being shown a version of them that I don’t recognise.
Maybe she has changed, and I genuinely hope she has. Regardless of what happened between us, I would never wish what she is currently going through upon anyone. I hope she finds happiness, meaning and genuine connection in whatever life lies ahead of her. At the same time, I am also happy she’s no longer part of my life
Those feelings aren’t mutually exclusive. I can wish someone well without wanting them back in my life, and I can acknowledge who they may have become without invalidating who they were to me. Perhaps one of the clearest signs that you’ve truly moved on from a relationship is no longer needing the rest of the world to see that person the way you did. You can simply know what you experienced, make peace with it and allow both of you to continue with your lives.
If there is one thing I would take away from all of this, it is to be discerning about the people we readily admire simply because they have an inspirational story to tell. The internet gives us access to people’s stories, but not necessarily their character. A compelling interview, a vulnerable social media post or an admirable message can tell us something about a person, but it can never tell us everything about them.
I’ve also learned not to confuse visibility with goodness. Some of the most genuinely kind, generous and inspiring people I know will never have an article written about them. They don’t document every good deed, turn every struggle into content or need an audience to validate the impact they have on others. Much of what they do happens quietly, in ordinary moments and behind the scenes, simply because that is who they are.
That doesn’t mean everyone who shares their story publicly is being performative. There are undoubtedly people who use their visibility sincerely and do tremendous good with it. It simply means that we should remain discerning. Public vulnerability is not proof of private character, just as a lack of visibility is not a lack of goodness.
So admire people’s stories if they move you. Learn from them if something they say helps you. But perhaps don’t be too quick to put strangers on pedestals simply because you’ve been shown an inspiring version of their lives.
Some of the most inspiring people you’ll ever meet may never call themselves inspirational at all. You will know them by how they consistently show up, how they treat people when there is nothing to gain from it, and how they make a difference even when nobody is watching.