Being Number 2

Life seems intent on reminding me that my place in it is as number 2.

Not the leader.  Not the starring role.  Not the one in charge - instead, I am reminded again that my role is second trumpet, supporting actor, someone pushing scenery around on a darkened stage.

Part of me simply thinks that I should have learned this lesson by now.  I've had literally years of practice doing it and yet, every time this situation arises again I feel shocked and amazed that it has occurred again.  It is as if my I consciously ignore what the circumstances are telling me and look to some vision only I can see about the way things ought to be.

I do get jerked back regularly though - every time the assignments come down as assignments, every time suggestions are pushed aside and I am "told" what I need to do and think, every time something I thought I was talented in is revealed to be not extraordinary (as if may have been in my mind) but simply ordinary - and if ordinary, easily replaceable or perhaps not even necessary.

Maybe the fault is my own.  Maybe I confuse leadership with visibility.  Sure, it is possible to be a leader without visibility - but if this is an acceptable situation, why do so many leaders insist on the attention as well as the acknowledgement?

Because ultimately being number  2 is about doing the work that needs to be done in a way that someone else gets the credit for it.

Maybe that is the source of my - I don't even know what to call it: anger?  despair?  depression? - this realization that the expectation by the ones leading is that you will do the work quietly and competently and then stand aside as the credit flows to them.  And that somehow, this is an acceptable situation for everyone concerned:  for them receiving such credit as the normal course of events, for number 2 to quietly return to the shadows and work in nameless recognition.

I keep trying to break out of this mold, yet constantly seem to be thrust back into it.  Is it possible that life is trying to tell me something?