"That horse can be amazingly strong. (...) and he can either work for us or against us. It can win the race or explode in the gate. So it is learning when to soothe and gentle it and when to let it run that marks the winning jockey, the true survivor.." (p. 34)

Background:
The LSO was talking to his Navy pilots using dark humor to drive the point across. Dark humor is about "gentling the beast, keeping it cool; and when it's time to run, it's about letting it flow, about having emotion and reason in perfect balance."

Quotes:
The human organism is like a jockey on a thoroughbred in the gate. He's a small man and it's a big horse, and if it decides to get excited in that small metal cage, the jockey is going to get mangled, possibly killed. So he takes great care to be gentle.

The jockey is reason and the horse is emotion, a complex of systems bred over eons of evolution and shaped by experience, which exist for your survival.

They are so powerful, they can make you do things you'd never think to do, and they can allow you to do things you'd never believe yourself capable of doing. The jockey can't win without the horse, and the horse can't race alone. In the gate, they are two, and it's dangerous. But when they run, they are one, and it's possibly godly.

Personal Comments:
Reason and Emotion are two strong forces within each one of us that are tested daily. As Nick L (and the other BUD/S candidates from 261) is about to embark his journey through Hell Week, these two forces will make him do stuff he doesn't even know yet that's is capable of.