What Curie is really saying here runs counter to how we're wired—fear exists partly *because* we don't understand, and understanding genuinely dissolves it. She's not telling us to be brave or white-knuckle through anxiety; she's offering something more radical: the simple act of looking closely at what frightens us, of becoming curious rather than defensive, transforms the whole thing. Consider how a child's terror of the dark evaporates the moment you turn on a light and show them the familiar room—the understanding didn't make them stronger, it made the fear irrelevant. Curie, who worked with radioactive materials that could have killed her, lived this philosophy daily: she studied what killed, and in studying it, lost the power it had to paralyze her.