owen c. middleton

"He argued that suicide would be permissible for those who found life meaningless, but that he had not yet reached that point. He argued that life was accidental but not necessarily meaningless. He was not religious and advised against seeking ”comfort in delusions, false tradition and superstition.” He discussed the difference between truth, which is neither beautiful or ugly, and belief  ”the idol-worshiping strain in our natures.” He said that “happiness is a state of mental contentment [which] can be found on a desert island, in a little town, or the tenements of a large city.” And he is optimistic about the future: ”[Humans are] an integral part of the universe in which [they] live, that universe which is ever moving forward to some appointed destiny.”

At the end of letter, before heading back to live what most of us would assume is a barren, futile and meaningless existence, convict 79206 painted a picture with his words. Through them his dignity, integrity, and strength of character shone forth:

'This evening I stood in the prison yard amid other prisoners, with eyes lifted aloft  gazing at that great … airship … as it sailed majestically over our heads. Into my mind came the thought that, just as that prehistoric creature struggled up out of the sea to the land, so is man struggling up from the land into the air. Who dare deny that, some day, up, ever up he will struggle thru the great reaches of interstellar space to wrest from it the knowledge which will enable him to lift his life to a plane as high above this, our present one, as it is above that of prehistoric man?

I do not know to what great end Destiny leads us, nor do I care very much. Long before that end, I shall have played my part, spoken my lines, and passed on. How I play that part is all that concerns me.

In the knowledge that I am an inalienable part of this wonderful, upward movement called life, and that nothing, neither pestilence, nor physical affliction, nor depression, nor prison, can take away from me my part, lies my consolation, my inspiration, and my treasure.'"