My “Red Thread” 🪡

This weekend I had the pleasure of playing for the annual opera workshop at my local university.  It’s also my alma mater.  I played in the orchestra with professors who have graded my work, and alongside whom I have taught as an instructor.  I also met Heidi when I was going to school, and it is hard for me to imagine a better traveling companion through life than her.  Our paths have stayed together tightly, and they both found their way through this picture, both of us dressed as Greek god(desse)s to play in the onstage orchestra.

Most of you reading this know me as an entrepreneur, philosopher, and leadership coach/consultant.  It’s been a successful feat of personal reinvention, and it’s not the first time I’ve done it.  The fact is that music was once the central focus of my life, and it remained so until something in me realized that it wasn’t how I was going to do my best work.  But it was my first beloved creative outlet and taught me crucial lessons about so very many things directly relevant to the work I currently do, both as a creator and advisor to others.  And so I will always have a special place in my heart for music.  It’s still my first love, but I don’t call myself a musician, because musicians feel a certain way, and I feel that I don’t quite feel that way anymore.

At one point, a bit more than a decade ago, I realized that music wasn’t what I was really here to do.  I didn’t like doing it as a job enough and I didn’t have effortless ingenuity and endless work ethic for music that I was beginning to realize I have for other things.  This took a lot of soul searching and willingness to shed identities that I had held to closely.

I still make music, and I love the current balance of my life.  It feels like just the right amount, and I’m proud of the contributions I make.  I’m grateful for the lessons in creativity and the learning process that music has given me over the years - it helps to form a unique perspective in the marketplace, a special take on communication and social connection that I just wouldn’t have without it.

If I really stop and think about it, I know I’ve seen glimmers of what would become my current work all throughout my life.  Sometimes you have to wait for things to align properly, and then things come together.

I once heard someone describe the phenomenon of one’s “red thread”, which strikes me as another version of Søren Kierkegaard’s famous quote “Life can only be understood backwards, but must be lived forwards.”  The red thread is a way to look back and see the unity in your path in spite of the variety of your experiences, roles, and the opportunities you have pursued.  It’s a way to get at your “essence”, to see the common elements of your successes and interests.  As I write this I realize it’s a little ironic, because many see Kierkegaard as a forerunner of Existentialism, which strongly implies that we don’t have a metaphysical essence.  I feel like people DO have essences, but they wear different clothes at different times in their lives, and a large key to happiness is to help one’s work tap into that essence in whichever season they are in.

Philosophy aside, the red thread is an interesting contemplative exercise to reflect on where you’ve been and what it has taught you about yourself.  And yes, it is common to require time to develop the perspective necessary to understand the significance and benefit of many life episodes.  Take a look back and you will likely see patterns, points of unity, a path that is more unidirectional than it typically feels in the moment as we navigate the often crushing burden of what mathematicians call “combinatorial explosion.”  More about that HERE.

MY RED THREAD 🪡

Here’s my read thread.  You have to pick a starting point because all stories go back to the beginning of the universe.  There is narrative significance in the very starting point of any story.

Age 9 - I write and draw about the problem of suffering, without offering a theodicy, that references the Holocaust and pogroms of Eastern Europe.  My rabbi puts it under the glass covering his desk.  He brings it out at my Bar Mitzvah.

Age 17 - My mother notices that my deep depression lifts only when I am engaging with music for class projects and makes the difficult decision to allow me to study music in college, against the advice of many other people in our family.

Age 25 - I am awarded a master’s degree in music composition in spite of a very difficult graduate school experience.  I knew I wouldn’t be happy unless I saw it through.

Age 27 - After struggling with our first attempts to promote and run a private music studio, Heidi and I attend our first business seminar.

Age 31 - I am invited to teach music theory courses as an adjunct instructor at said alma mater.  After some initially rocky efforts I devised a near-seamless curriculum which addressed the cognitive styles of literally everyone in my classes, leading to a high degree of comprehension and mastery.  I would later attempt to package and market this, but realized it wasn’t my highest or best use.

Age 35 - After losing this adjunct position and finding a new form of depression, Heidi and I encounter both personality type and the Law of Attraction, which give our individual and collective attitudes a much-needed boost of positivity and compassion.

Age 37 - Heidi and I realize that we are giving business and marketing advice to a good many friends, and create a consulting firm called Clearly Simple.  Doing this work teaches me more about communication and persuasion in 3 years than I have learned at any other time in my life.

Age 39 - The full gravity of the pandemic response lands on my birthday in 2020, and I encounter leadership challenges on an order I have never faced.  In spite of the initial challenges, our music school stabilizes, and Clearly Simple grows significantly.

Age 41 - I realize that my philosophical and nuanced way of thinking has a higher and better use than marketing, web design, and social media.  This use is helpful for leaders and fulfilling for me.  After achieving our highest grossing month of Clearly Simple in July of 2022, I decide to reposition as a leadership coach, creating the first ideas and content that will become AaronJMarx.com.  It is the 5 Metaphysical Realms.

Today I’m 43.  Colonel Sanders, born in 1890, was 62 when the first KFC franchise opened, and 73 when he sold the company to investors for what is the equivalent of $20 million dollars now.

The story I told may seem disjunct and episodic, and to some people I’m sure it is, but I see a clear line.  Perhaps not a straight one, but a thread that ties it all together.  A thread of essence.

Many of us do many things.  And sometimes we think we’ve found the *one thing* that will take us where we are going.  But often it’s a latest best guess, and there are new corners of reality to investigate, new dynamics we simply don’t and can’t have a concept of.  Corners that are remarkably fulfilling, and a good fit for our essence.

Music is still my first love, but I’m glad I saw that it wasn’t a job I really wanted to do.  I still do as much music as I want, and it’s a good amount, but I like the other things I do much better.

What’s your “read thread”?  🪡 Have you traced your essence through your journey?  Give it a try if you’ve never done that.  You may be surprised by what you find and what it teaches you about yourself.

And never forget that we’re all telling stories, all the time, and that our primary job in each moment is to determine the best way to tell them for the specific aim we have.  That’s pretty much what life is.  Hope you enjoyed the story of my read thread.  I’d love to hear more about yours!