The Circle

by Dave Eggers

She’d never been one to ask for something like that, to be rescued, to be lifted.

It was as if they went, in the course of a year, from being young parents in over their heads, to grandparents, slow-moving and warm and clueless about what exactly their daughter wanted.

Having a matrix of preferences presented as your essence, as the whole you? Maybe that was it. It was some kind of mirror, but it was incomplete, distorted.

Your tools have elevated gossip, hearsay and conjecture to the level of valid, mainstream communication.

Not to say this kind of attitude is antisocial, but it’s certainly sub-social, and certainly far from transparent. And we see that this behavior sometimes stems from a low sense of self-worth—a point of view that says, ‘Oh, what I have to say isn’t so important.’ Do you feel that describes your point of view?”

This was a new skill she’d acquired, the ability to look, to the outside world, utterly serene and even cheerful, while, in her skull, all was chaos.

We are not meant to know everything, Mae. Did you ever think that perhaps our minds are delicately calibrated between the known and the unknown? That our souls need the mysteries of night and the clarity of day?