Thirty-Year Anniversary of Dad's Death (I Am Not a Check Casher)
by Mike Levin
Wednesday, June 08, 2022Today is the 30th anniversary of my fatherâs death, Charles Levin, June 8th, 1992. The Amiga computer died. Dad died. Early signs of my mother going crazy were setting in, and my perpetually angry sister and her crazy friend Trava that she brought with her from California moved in on me, being in town for my graduation and suddenly with no signs of leaving. I had to take over my dadâs check cashing store, because ostensibly, it was all he had to leave my sister and me and as executor of the estate, I was legally bound to preserve the assets.
And in the course of running that check cashing store, a man tries to rob me and I shoot him four times with a gun I didnât yet have a license to carry. Iâm charged for a crime myself and quickly released, but my âcareerâ coming out of college with stars in my eyes being the kid beamed up to the Commodore mother ship came crashing down around me. Meanwhile, a snot-nosed neighbor I had a childhood rivalry with shoots onto the Forbes 40 under 40 list. And why do I even care? The idea of being him is reprehensible. So what do I want? And why do I even write this?
Well, I write this because itâs been thirty years since Dadâs death, and it honors his memory for what itâs worth to remember him, and maybe does some good for me. I was twenty-one. Iâm now fifty-one. Thirty-one and forty-one came in-between. Where was I then? Was I keeping a journal like now? Forget about what I would have done differently. What do I know now that I would have liked to have known then? What gifts can I give to my child based on the advantage of years and having experienced a thing or two?
Easy! Listen more closely to your own internal voice than to the voices of others, pop-culture, expectations of parents, or even your teachers, college professors, heroes or whoever. Thereâs a voice deep inside you thatâs hard to hear, but itâs there. And be careful âcause thereâs really a lot of different voices inside of you, and some belong to the worm, the fish, the frog, the lizard, the ferret, the poo-flinging primate, and then finally that most special and most meta of all, the ringmaster.
We all have a circus inside of us. The analogy to a 3-ring circus is good. Thereâs different acts like the lion-tamer, the high-diver, the tightrope walker, the trapeze, the elephants balancing on balls and all the rest. As I point out more and more, all the animal acts are actually quite inhumane and should maybe be retired like the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus actually had to do. But for now, the image is still strong and can probably do you some good. We all need the Ringmaster in charge. The inner voice you should be listening to is the Ringmasterâs. The Ringmasterâs voice is the one that will eventually come out if you write regularly into a diary or a journal, like I am essentially doing right now.
Okay, so what does the Ringmaster say to me right now? The most important concept I have encountered in recent years is that of Ikigai. It is a Venn diagram of the intersection of:
- What you love doing
- What youâre good at
- What you can get paid for
- What the world needs
Is this a post about my dadâs death after 30 years or about other stuff I found along the way? Itâs about honoring his memory, and whoever I am today is a result of many of the lessons that he knowingly and unknowingly instilled into me. I didnât like to disappoint Dad. On the few times I did, it still resonates in my head like it was yesterday. He taught me about much I feel in this concept of Ikigai. He told me about his dreams and disappointments in life and how it was from listening to the bad advice of his uncles, Jews from the textile industry where a Jew could actually get jobs and stay employed.
You have to remember he comes from a time when IBM wouldnât hire Jews. His dream of being going to Drexel and becoming an aeronautical engineer seemed unattainable. I went to Drexel. I started out in mechanical engineering with similar dreams of actually being one of the people helping to colonize our solar system. I think today I might have been happier with microbiology like that other Michael Levin working on epigenetic. Shaping who you are through force-of-will like Green Lantern being real is beyond all hope and imagining regarding the type of world we live in. Wow! How could anyone be a pessimist?
Everything relates to our journey here on this material world. My dad took his turn here. Iâm taking my turn here. Youâre taking your turn here. Doors are opened for others through having kids. My parents opened the door for me. Your parents opened the door for you. If you were to calculate the probability of your existence youâd see itâs rather unlikely and quite a gift. It doesnât hurt to keep reminding yourself of that. Itâs yet another reason for gratitude. Thanks Dad! Thanks for you being here and thanks for opening the door for me. Thanks to you too, Mom. Iâll give you your homage later.
So maybe weâre just emergent properties of evolution or maybe weâre spirits from other realm invited in by virtue of the âvibeâ established by the process of sperm and egg combining in conception and a new unique code. Thatâs your most basic vibe and the âyouâ that you may be happy with, or may wish to override when you become meta at 9, 10, 11 or 12 years old. By the time youâre 13 or 14, youâve done your first self-crafting, either intentionally or unintentionally. If youâve done a good job and kept yourself open-minded and dynamic, youâre golden. If youâve become close-minded, embittered and angry, youâre going to have a tough life full of blame and not a lot of control over your own destiny.
Human free-will is a thing. Or as the Green Lantern corps would point out, itâs actually sentient-life free-will thatâs a thing. Lots of being-types can override the highest probability predetermined clockwork-universe type outcomes of things. If you were a betting God, thatâs where things get interesting because thatâs where things become surprising. How boring it must be to God, knowing all that ever was and ever will be. The past is the future and the future is the past and all that exists exists like a crystalline sculpture to pick up and examine as a piece of art, but whereâs the surprise? Whereâs the excitement of creation?
Surprise God. Make your life a life worth tuning-in and paying attention to. Donât do what your uncles tell you to do because of their view of the world. Observe for yourself. Have confidence in your ability to help shape and change the world right as you engage in it. Observe patterns and step into the path of love-worthy things. Do what you love. Do what youâre good at, although that may take a bit of time to accomplish. Do what you can get paid for. And ultimately, try to align it to what the world needs.
My dad knew the world needed aeronautical engineers. Who from his generation didnât know that (the space race). But whereas my dad allowed his dream to be crushed, got into a bad marriage, and only barely transmitted to me his love of things before he clocked out way too early (63 years old), find your love earlier. Iâm fifty-one years old. Iâm only twelve years younger than my dad was before he died. I do not think I only have twelve years left. I have so much to live for, and I wonât let the circumstances of my life crush me like it crushed him. No, Iâm going to love what I do going into these later years.
I am not a check-casher. Thank you Dad for teaching me that when I was only twenty-one. I can imagine that would have been a lesson for me to learn in my fifties and sixties like it was you.