An Insistant Advisor

I got accepted. Yeah, you read right. And (drumroll) with no interview. Why? I have absolutely no idea. This afternoon I got a call on my cellphone - congratulations, you've been accepted for the South Seas 2007. . . Pretty much out of the blue. Anyone who knows me well is aware that I dread phone interviews; I was massively relieved. And pleased to get accepted. But excited? No, funny enough, not really. I should be, there's no reason for me not to be - and yet I'm not. Feelings often fail to line up with reason. I noted this the other day as well, as I waited to start my interview - I knew the director was a nice guy, I knew I had a good application, I wasn't worried that things would go wrong - but my stomach was still churning, and no amount of mental calisthenics was going to help. For us average peons, "mind over matter" only goes so far. At a certain point our bodies go maverick on us and there's little we can do to keep them in line. It's a wee bit scary at times, if you think about these things - it's roughly analogous to driving a car that occasionally decides to run at whatever speed it feels like. Note, however, that the driver can still choose where to go. That's our one comfort, I suppose. No matter what our body does or what we feel like (are the two really as segregated as some think?) we can still control our choices, though not always exactly how they're worked out. This is the point that humanists (willingly?) miss - the body, though unbelievably strong, does not have the last say. In the big things, the important things, it can only play the part of an (impertinently insistent) advisor.