Do They Know the Real You?
Exploring the side of life we never share with the world.
In some sense or another, nobody gets to see the real you, and I don’t think that’s a problem. There’s a different version of you in each person’s mind, and that’s no fault of your own, that’s just how life works. Each person you interact with receives only a small portion of the time that makes up your life. They can’t know the full you, because they aren’t always with you.
The only person who knows the full you is you. You’re the only one who is present in all of your moments. So since each person experiences a completely different part of your life, they’re only going to know the side of you that they have seen in your time together.
The purpose of today’s piece is to have a conversation about the nature of this divide. The divide between who you are in entirety, and the segmented unique versions of you that exist in each person’s mind. My goal is to make sure we’re all informed on the dynamics of human relation.
I guess you could say that there are infinite versions of you in the mental landscapes of others. Each mind has a unique impression of you, accurate only as far as they’ve had the time to get to know you. Some will know more, maybe your loved ones, others will hardly know you at all, passing strangers. Some will see you as the hero you are, and others will see you as the villain you can be; our ups and downs captured in the minds of others.
Seen at your weakest you may be interpreted as soft, seen at your strongest you may be interpreted as courageous, seen at your most caring you may be interpreted as kind hearted, and seen at your worst you may be interpreted as an enemy. Truth be told, all of these interpretations are true. However, none of them are the full picture, just passing moments in the lives of others that fuel their interpretations of you.
You live uniquely in each mind that knows you.
What to Do About This Conundrum?
Often in life we’re faced with puzzling circumstances. Experiences that are undeniably true, yet there are no instructions given as to what one should do about these puzzles. And without a doubt, the fact that every person you will ever meet will have a different version of you in their mind is certainly puzzling. But what to do about it?
Like many other things in life, you’ve really only got two options: swim downstream or swim upstream. You could fight with life and your very nature, trying to contest with reality, or you could invite in the absurdity, kiss it on the forehead and make it home.
Swimming downstream means to let life carry you on its natural course. A necessary caveat: you shouldn’t always do this. Sometimes you’ve got to rage against the rapids and claim your place of safety on shore. But, when fighting for a cause that makes no sense, such as when faced with absurd certainties like our conundrum from before, the only path to peace is to ride the waves.
You’ve got to welcome absurdity, not as something foreign, but rather as life itself. Life is crazy sometimes, and the more willing you are to be ok about it, the better you’re going to handle whatever comes your way.
How Does One Welcome Absurdity?
Well, by simply accepting it. There’s no need to fight with people over how they perceive you. It’s unfortunate that one guy saw you picking your nose at the bus stop, but what are you going to do about it? Are you going to go over and tell him about the amazing things you’ve done to adjust for the injustice of the moment? No. And why not? Because he saw the real you.
He saw the version of you that existed in that moment. And in fact, that’s probably the only version of you that he will ever know. And he’s justified in his assessment that you’re a nose picker, nothing you can do about it. In fact, arguing your case would make you look insecure and crazy, you’re better off just being the nose picker from the bus stop.
Nobody wants to be in the wrong, but you must remember that people only know the version of you that they have experienced. And it goes both ways, you might be remembered as the most loving and kind person to the strangers you’ve helped, but they don’t know your darkest secrets, the things you refuse to tell even your closest.
The only person who knows you entirely is you. You’re the only one who can verify your authenticity. It doesn’t matter if you end up the nose picker, the person who stared too long, or the smelly gym person, if you really did those things, then that’s you. What’s important is that you manage your day to day, making sure that the version of you that goes out to the world is the real one.
It doesn’t matter if someone only sees your good or your bad side, that’s guaranteed in life. What’s important is that when you offer all sides, you’re really being you. The foundation of any relationship (not just romantic) is built on the version of you that you share with others. You’ll be better off giving the real and ugly than the false and pretty, because one day they’ll see the real you and your connection will have been built on a lie.
Life gives you a chance at redemption, if someone sees the ugly and still hangs around, they’ll get the beautiful too. And if someone sees the beautiful first and decides to hang around, they’ll get the ugly as well.
Your safest bet is to just be you and let the cards fall where they may. No need to control how you’re seen in the minds of others, every person has a different version of you in their mind, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
How Did I Get Here?
Something I’ve been cognisant of for a while now is my relationship with swearing. I like to swear, in fact I do it all the time. I’m of the belief that words are just words, it’s how you use them that matter. However, what I’m also aware of, is how other people view this topic, because not everyone agrees.
Some people, and I would even argue society in general, apply a negative connotation to swear words. In that they’re given a special kind of status in society, with very loose rules around when it’s appropriate to use them, rules that obviously change based on a variety of factors such as age, country, culture, family values, religious values, et cetera.
And I’m more than sympathetic to this mix of perspectives, often if not most of the time I limit my swearing to only what’s necessary, if it’s ever necessary to swear. I see no benefit in offending people when I could just as easily not swear. Basically, my lack of swearing is the product of a sensitivity to the cultural norm. However, you might be wondering how I can say that I love to swear and that I limit my swearing at the same time. Aren’t those statements contradictory?
Yes, yes they are. The difference is that I swear mostly alone, and occasionally around people I’m close with. Something you’ll never see, and I’m pretty sure has never happened, is me swearing in my writing. Because the version of me who writes these essays is not the version of me who washes the dishes, or the version of me a few drinks down on a Saturday night.
Different circumstances draw out different versions of us. Like how we might wear formal clothing and keep our behaviour modest at a wedding, depending on the type of wedding I guess. Whereas you’d be lucky if people bothered to put on shoes when going to the beach here in Australia.
Every person you meet gets a different version of you. On a different day in a different place with different thoughts and feelings, you’re a different you. Work you is probably quite different from home you, just to give an example, depending on your job of course. As such, swearing me only comes out in certain circumstances.
Only Part of the Story
It was only after studying my swearing habits that I began to notice the difference between the me I know, and the me that everyone else gets. I then realised that everyone gets a different version of me, including you, the reader.
You get the smart casual me. The clean but not too clean me. The hair is brushed but not styled me. The no swearing but ready to crack a moderately inappropriate joke that everyone is fine with me. The tell only what needs to be told version of my life.
I’ve made my writing a place for human stories, but also for education, which requires my work to be real, but also respectful. I could let it all out but that would only descend my creations into chaos, the story only needs what the story needs to be told, nothing more.
And like this curated, it’s not something I do intentionally by the way, version of myself that I offer here in my writing, we’re always curating and offering different versions of ourselves to different people. And as long as the version of you that you present is appropriate to the circumstances and authentic to you, then I see nothing wrong with this.
Sharing only a part of you is not a lie, it’s just not the full story. It wouldn’t be appropriate to always share the full story, a life is complicated and some things are best kept just for you and the people closest to you, the ones who understand and accept a more complete version of you.
I find it amazing that I don’t swear in my writing. It’s not that I try to avoid swearing, it just never feels like coming out. It’s as if I flick the swearing switch off when I pick up the computer, my avoidance is automatic. But when I close the computer, open up Instagram, and then see the chaos that is on Reels, I'm more than happy to swear, glad to do so in fact. What a world Instagram has become.
To Summarise
Could you imagine if you told every person you ever met your entire life story? You couldn’t if you tried, and who would want to? That’s life.
Each person just gets what they get from you, and all you have to do is make sure what they get is authentic, good or bad. There’s no shame in being the finger in the nose person if that’s truly you. If you don’t like being that person, don’t try to change someone else’s mind, change your behaviour.
If you’re willing to embrace life and accept that you can’t control how you’re perceived, you’ll be happier for it. The key point I want to get across is that it’s ok if each person knows a different you, in fact that’s just how life works.
Staying authentic is a goal for many people, myself included, and it’s not the hundred and one versions of you that exist in other people’s minds which violate this authenticity, it’s that one person you intentionally manipulated which violates your authenticity.
Your life is split into segments by the people who have met you. Some have seen small slices here and there, and others have seen huge chunks, but nobody has seen it all. Authenticity is how you show up in each and every moment, it has nothing to do with how much time you’ve spent with someone. You could be truly authentic in a chance encounter with a stranger, yet lie to a relative you have known for years.
It’s ok to be yourself, though you don’t have to give out everything all at once, you can share as appropriate. Questions don’t need to be answered, details don’t need to be given, words don’t need to be shared, as long as what you do give out is true to you, you’re good.
No one can ever know the full you except you. Not your mum, not your dog, not your neighbour, not your partner. There will always be feelings, moments, memories, experiences, and thoughts that are lost to time, never to be shared with another human. All of that is you, but none of that will be shared with others.
You’re a veiled character, sheltered by the shadow of people’s ignorance. A darkness that can only be illuminated with time, yet one that can never be fully exposed. As the past is already over, you are unknowable in your entirety.
A stranger is a full and complete human just as you are, yet it’s only your ignorance of their existence that makes them a stranger, a question mark in your experience. But with time, with experience, you can start to put together the puzzle that is them by using the small moments of their life that you have shared with them, moments in time which will never tell the full story. Everyone is always a little bit of a stranger.
You can guess what’s going through their head, how they’re feeling, what they want for dinner, or where they’re going, but you can never know everything. You can’t know the feeling they get when the sun first shines in their eyes of a morning, or what they’re dreaming of when the sun sets at the end of the day. That’s all them.
You can never share everything, but everything you share can be you.
Also! Please consider sharing with whoever might be interested 🔗
Your essay is as thoughtful as it is sweeping, like a soliloquy whispered across the canyon of human perception. And while I admire its existential grace, I’ll offer a slight reframing: yes, there are infinite versions of us scattered across the minds we’ve brushed against, but rather than lament the fragmentation, why not consider it a form of social cubism? Like Picasso’s “Girl Before a Mirror”, where truth lies in the interplay of angles, distortions, and reflections, not in any one faithful rendering.
We are, indeed, a mosaic of contradictions. But the idea that the only person who knows the “real you” is you… I must respectfully challenge that. Can one ever fully know oneself? Freud would scoff. Montaigne, that deliciously self-probing skeptic, might argue that our inner depths are no less mysterious than anyone else’s perception of us. We are unreliable narrators of our own stories. Even Hamlet (who had plenty of soliloquies to explore his inner world) remained a mystery to himself.
Take Nabokov, who once claimed, “I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child.” Three different selves, coexisting. And I’d wager none of them fully knew the others. So yes, maybe we can’t control how others see us, but neither can we wholly trust how we see ourselves.
What I take from this eloquent meditation is this: authenticity is not a single candle in a dark room, but a constellation, glimpsed from many vantage points, shifting as the earth tilts. The art lies not in presenting the same self to every person, but in being coherent across those selves. Not polished. Coherent.
And if someone remembers you as the nose-picker at the bus stop? Let them. Maybe that version of you taught them to be less judgmental. Or funnier. Or more forgiving.
In the end, we’re all trying to piece each other together like blind cartographers sketching from touch. The miracle is not that we get it wrong but that, sometimes, we get it close enough to love each other anyway.