Somewhere Bravery Cannot Go
Updated: Aug 14
I was reading through a list of my favorite quotes the other day—an admittedly long list—and was reminded of one that once lived as a tagline in my emails.
“Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will.” —James Stephens
I’m grateful to have become reacquainted with it because it left me pondering a question.
What is it about curiosity that might be more enduring than bravery?
I’ve spent much of my career sitting with people who are understandably frightened. Not always visibly so. Sometimes they’re remarkably composed or make jokes. Sometimes they’re talking about their next treatment as matter-of-factly as they might talk about an appointment for a haircut.
Still, my patients tell me how frustrating it can be when people tell them how brave they are for facing cancer.
“I’m not brave,” they’ll say. “What choice do I have?”
I understand why they feel that way. You sit in the treatment chair, show up for scans, extend an arm for another blood draw, and live with side effects you never imagined having to tolerate while you wait for results that may change the direction of your life and the lives of those you care about.
You grit your teeth and get through it, hoping for the best outcome possible.
There is probably bravery in that. And I understand why it may not always feel like bravery from the inside. Sometimes just getting through something is what we do when the alternative is not available to us.
Which brings me back to Stephens’s quote.
Why curiosity?
What could curiosity possibly offer someone who is frightened?
I spend a great deal of time asking patients questions. Not that I necessarily think I know where the questions will lead. Usually, I don’t.
What has this experience been like for you?
What are you noticing about yourself?
What has become more important?
What is your body asking of you now?
What is hardest about not knowing?
We pause.
And then we become curious together.
Cancer asks for an extraordinary amount of patience. There are appointments to wait for, treatments to complete, bodies that recover at their own pace, and scan results that stubbornly refuse to arrive any faster just because we desperately want them to.
We can grit our teeth through the waiting.
Or we can also become curious about it.
Curiosity doesn’t make any of those experiences easier. It doesn’t make the scan result arrive sooner or eliminate a treatment side effect. And it certainly doesn’t promise that what we discover will be comforting.
But perhaps curiosity changes the way we stand in relation to what is happening.
Fear wants certainty. It wants to know what comes next. It wants guarantees that medicine, despite everything it can do, can’t always provide.
Fear can ask What if? endlessly, carrying us into futures that may never happen.
Curiosity asks something different.
I’m curious about what this fear is trying to protect.
I’m curious what matters most to me.
I’m curious about what makes the loss so difficult.
I’m curious about how I want to live, even though I don’t know what the future will bring.
Curiosity brings us back to the experience we’re actually having.
It doesn’t ask us to predict.
It asks us to notice.
I see this happen with my patients. I ask a question and watch someone pause, often for quite a while, before answering. And occasionally what comes next seems to surprise both of us.
Those moments stay with me. I leave the room carrying questions of my own.
Over the years, my patients have taught me an enormous amount about fear and hope, love and loss, patience and uncertainty, and bravery. They’ve made me reconsider things I thought I understood. Their stories have changed the way I think about my own life.
I think that’s why I write these reflections.
I’m still curious.
Maybe Stephens was right.
Maybe curiosity can take us somewhere bravery cannot.
Bravery may help us grit our teeth and keep going when we have no other choice.
Curiosity invites us to notice what is happening within us along the way.
And sometimes, in that noticing, we discover not only how we’re getting through our lives—
but how we want to live them.
Reflections on the inner psychological experience of living alongside cancer.
Jae L. Ross, PsyD, is a clinical psychologist who works with individuals and families whose lives have been reshaped by cancer, helping them navigate the emotional challenges of diagnosis, treatment, and beyond.
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