Second fiddle is the only place left. Take it

The toughest part to play in the orchestra of life is second fiddle. For most of us, the 40-odd years we work never go beyond the back row or the support role or the subordinate staff level, our lives spent seguing to other people’s tunes, responding to their moods, their calls, their signals, their priorities and their orders.

Then, one day, it is all over and we are dispatched to the farm, and all we have to show for it is a crummy badge of loyal service or something equally tacky, a refined way of telling us that we settled for seconds.

I wonder what point it is in time or career that we give up reaching for the stars and accept that the battle to be the conductors in life is ended. We will never hack it; all we will forever be is faceless people in row seven, seat six, next to the man with cymbals, you, that fellow, whatsisname yeah, you, the one with the second fiddle.

Think of it. When we are born and everyone loves us and tickles our tummies and granddad says we are going to be famous, there is actually a tenuous but very real belief that we will write the script of our own lives, do it our way, march to our own drumbeat and the heck with everyone else. There goes a winner, his destiny making contrails in the sky.

Then, it all goes wrong.

Not so much wrong as the script gets lost, the doors do not open and windows are jammed shut.

We now find we are compelled to do the other man’s bidding, dance to some other tune, well, maybe for now, but next year, I shall write my own score, go out there and show them I am number one, hello, can anyone hear me, I am the tops, this is just a temporary setback, Kilroy will return, I am biding my time, waiting for the right moment to make my move.

That moment never comes. That’s the misery of strategy. It lets you down.

Gradually, like the October mist, the plan melts into stark reality. We won’t ever make it. The cigar goes to someone else; we’ll have to settle for the exhale.

I feel sad when I face these facts. Sadder, when the victims of surrender meet with you and you read it in their faces and their crumbled posture—the fight has gone out of them. Their lives have become so responsive. A phone call is a command, a day in the office is a string of orders and demands, the right to decide made by others for them. Fetch it, get it, bring it, leave it, do it—these are the high notes of their daily symphony and the moving finger has written and you bet your last rupee she isn’t coming back to wipe out a word of it.