Ortega y Gasset on Life and Reality

This is from Man and People

This inexorable genuineness of our life, the life, I repeat, of each one of us, this genuineness that is evident, indubitable, unquestionable to itself, is my first reason for calling our life "radical reality." But there is a second reason. Calling it "radical reality" does not mean that it is the only reality, nor even the high- est, worthiest or most sublime, nor yet the supreme reality, but simply that it is the root of all other realities, in the sense that they - any of them - in order to be reality to us must in some way make themselves present, or at least announce themselves, within the shaken confines of our own life. Hence this radical reality - my life - is so little "egoistic," so far from "solipsistic," that in essence it is the open area, the waiting stage, on which any other reality may manifest itself and celebrate its Pentecost.