"The Silver Key" by H.P. Lovecraft

"Wonder had gone away, and he had forgotten that all life is only a set of pictures in the brain, among which there is no difference betwixt those born of real things and those born of inward dreamings, and no cause to value the one above the other" (193).
This unsure nature of life is probably what makes the speaker of the story regard his surroundings as "... a meaningless universe without fixed aims or stable points of reference" (195). Without knowing whether or not your remembrances and associations are "real" or imaginary in some moment of your past, how can we even insert ourselves into a context of the world. This could be quite a frustrating experience for some people, as not knowing whether your thoughts are based on reality or make-believe is not a very stable position to be in. But, then again, I could go into the "but what IS reality anyway? How do we know anything is real at all?" But I won't because I absolutely despise this philosophy. Although it could have some truth to it, I don't see a reason for it to matter at all. If it is something that we perceive to have happened, than my opinion as that we should simply accept that it happened and believe it to be fact, even if it could be part of this 'dream-world' we could possibly all be living in. If we walked around not accepting that a table was a table, living would be extremely difficult and we wouldn't be able to go on in the world. Honestly, I think it would just cause half of the worlds people to go mentally insane. I have even confused myself in writing this blog post, and even contemplating the possibility that nothing could be real has frustrated me.