How different is your public persona from the one your family knows?

Have you ever overheard people describe or talk about someone you know very well and wondered whether they were referring to the same person?

I ask this because I once attended an event where I happened to sit with a group of people that worked with someone I had known for years.

This someone was a panelist in the event, and when he was introduced, his colleagues almost brought the roof down, literally, with their thunderous clapping and cheering.

 It was obvious that they liked him a lot, a factor that puzzled me because the people that knew this person and had grown up with him, including his relatives, had a lot to say about him, and little of it was good. They often complained about his unreliability, lack of compassion, stinginess and pride.

Anyway, my tablemates started talking about him, paying him glowing tribute, besides themselves at what a wonderful human being he was. I must have done a double-take 10 times in those few minutes because the person they were describing was alien to me.

At some point, I was sure that I was confusing the person seated at the front of the room with someone else. I had to crane my neck to get a good look at him because they were describing a stranger.

They described him as kind, generous, helpful, efficient and reliable. One woman narrated how he once readily lent her money she needed desperately when her mother was admitted in hospital and told her that she should not be under pressure to pay him back, that he could wait until she got the money.

Times of crisis

My mouth must have gaped open like that of a fish at that moment because those who knew the man, including his family, knew him as stingy. There was a time one of his siblings was admitted in hospital, and like most families do in times of crisis, they came together to raise money to pay the piling hospital bill.

The man in question never turned up for the fundraising, and when he was called, he said that he had ‘a lot going on’ in his life at that moment and could therefore not afford to contribute.

You probably know people like this. People that treat their closest, (those that should be their dearest, such as spouse and children) with blatant disregard, even cruelty, yet treat their friends, colleagues, even mere acquaintances, with kindness and generosity.

A man will, for instance, readily buy his friends beer and nyama choma on a night out yet that very morning, threw a fit when his wife asked him for money to buy groceries or meat for that day’s supper.

Or those people that are always at hand to attend to their friends’ emergencies but are never available when their families, including their children, need them. In their homes, these people are quarrelsome, moody, rude, even violent, yet in public, they are civilised, immensely likeable and are used as an example of what integrity looks like, such that they are often singled out in public and asked to ‘salimia watu’ during functions.

If you are a psychologist and are reading this, why is it that some people cultivate an endearing persona in public, which they quickly shed off when they return home to the people they are supposed to love and care for?

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