Victoria's Secret

Finding equilibrium is the way to contentment, as Grenville Kent discovered—by accident!

Victoria, maaate—Victoria, she was five feet of be-yoodiful Greek goddess (plus five inches of hair). She was about 55 and wore the banana-skin yellow uniform of the public hospital cleaners. She worked an orbital floor polisher twice the size of my lawnmower. Its two wheels, which sat low below the stalk of the handle, rarely touched down as it helicoptered along on a fast-spinning pad.
I watched Victoria pilot her metallic weapon with three nonchalant fingers, one hand in her pocket, and told her she made her work look easy.
“Easy? You try then, smarty Skippy boy.”
Well, OK. How hard can . . .
Vrrrreeeeeeeeem! It spun me round and round like bush-dancing with Godzilla. I switched off, unwound tightening garrottes of power cord from my body, and grinned at the cackling Victoria five metres away.
“Next dance?”
I braced my shoulders and widened my stance ready for clockwise force. I was an 18-year-old rugby forward at the time, but I could barely hold the monster. With colossal effort I managed slow progress down the ward until the polishing pad brushed a nursing trolley, which went down in a carillon of falling bedpans. The polisher careened in wild circles, widdershins now, and slammed heavily into a wall. I let go and it stopped.

Victoria’s laughter nearly wheezed up a lung. As I sheepishly retrieved bedpans, I wondered how Victoria—tiny, an unfit smoker and not exactly a young Olympian—could tame the beast day after day using just three fingers.
With the gravitas of Socrates enlightening a disciple, Victoria whispered her secret in my ear as she stepped in between me and machine, “Don’t fight it . . . balance.” She rocked a hand laterally.
I tried again and finally found an angle where it stopped fighting me back. “Eureka!’”
“Kala, Skippy! Good!”
Now it was easy. So easy, I got lax and lost the angle. I fought hard for awhile, but found balance again.
We all fight needless fights: Life stress. Parts of yourself. And I won’t claim I do life with effortless grace, but it’s easy now that I know Victoria’s secret: Balance.
Spirituality balances you up. And Jesus’ secret: “Come to me if you’re stressed and burned out and I will give you rest . . . because working hard with me is easy.’* That’s His offer to help us find equilibrium.

Every Saturday, I celebrate God’s Sabbath, a religious rest day for family and friends, and strictly no work. (An overworked atheist friend once quipped, “Your religion makes you take a day off every week? Can I join?”)
Sabbath reminds me that happiness can’t be achieved by mere human grunt and stress response; rather, by trusting God’s generous, creative providence. And that afterlife is not earned by good works or being good, but comes from Jesus’ superhuman effort—His dying on a cross for love of us. After a good Sabbath, you work hard easily.
In the New Testament it says, “There remains . . . a Sabbath—rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from his own work. . . . Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest” (Hebrews 4:9-11).
Put time and effort into connecting with God, or waste all that energy fighting life yourself? You don’t have to be Victoria to know that’s an easy choice, maate.
Nah, I’m tellin’ youse, eeeeasy!

* Matthew 11:28, 29 paraphrase

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