I never had a conscious fear of death, but I did have a conscious

When Sherwin B. Nuland said, “I never had a conscious fear of death, but I did have a conscious fear of sickness. By the time I completed medical school, that fear was gone,” he was not speaking merely as a doctor, but as a philosopher who had walked through the valley of the body’s frailty and emerged with understanding. His words are a reflection on the relationship between fear, knowledge, and acceptance — a journey from ignorance to wisdom, from anxiety to peace. In these few lines, Nuland reveals the paradox of the human condition: that we fear not the end itself, but the slow unraveling of our wholeness; not death, but sickness, because sickness reminds us of our vulnerability. Yet once he came to know the body — to see it as a marvel of resilience as much as a vessel of decay — his fear dissolved into respect. He no longer trembled before illness, for he had seen what lies within it: the truth of our shared humanity.

To fear death is to fear the inevitable; to fear sickness is to fear the unknown. Before Nuland became a healer, sickness was to him a shadow — a formless threat, the whisper of frailty that might strike without reason. But as he learned the anatomy of the body, its systems, its mysterious harmony, he came to see that sickness was not an invader from without, but a natural part of existence. In medical school, he gazed upon the fragile machinery of life — the heart’s rhythm, the lungs’ quiet persistence — and realized that suffering was not chaos but continuity. What once inspired fear began to inspire awe. His knowledge did not make the body less mortal, but it made mortality comprehensible. And in understanding, fear loses its hold.

The origin of this wisdom lies in Nuland’s own journey through the halls of medicine. As a young man, he stood among the sick and dying, watching bodies fail and revive, sometimes in the same hour. He learned to see illness not as cruelty but as a teacher — a mirror in which life’s fragility is made visible. This transformation is one that echoes through the history of healers. The first physicians of Greece, followers of Asclepius, were trained not only in medicine but in philosophy. They were taught that to heal, one must first accept the nature of decay. Nuland stands in their lineage, a modern heir to that ancient truth: that wisdom is born not in denial of suffering, but in intimate acquaintance with it.

Consider the story of Anton Chekhov, the great Russian writer and physician. Like Nuland, Chekhov spent his youth surrounded by sickness and death. As a doctor, he tended to peasants stricken with tuberculosis — the same disease that would later consume him. Yet he never turned from his patients in despair. Instead, his writing, filled with compassion and quiet strength, reflected a profound acceptance of life’s imperfections. He once said, “You must work, work, work, even in the face of death.” Through knowledge and service, he too conquered the fear of sickness, not by fleeing it, but by embracing the reality of the human condition. Such is the path of those who seek not to escape suffering, but to understand it.

Nuland’s words also speak to a larger truth about the power of knowledge. What we fear most in life often springs from what we do not understand. The ancients taught that ignorance is the father of terror. To learn — truly to see — is to strip the unknown of its disguise. When Nuland studied the body, he replaced mystery with meaning, and anxiety with acceptance. He saw that sickness is not a betrayal of the body, but part of its long conversation with time. Each ache, each ailment, is the body’s way of revealing its story — a story of endurance and change. When we understand that, our fear becomes reverence, and our dread turns to gratitude for the fragile gift of life itself.

In his transformation, there is also a call to courage. For it is not enough to learn about the body’s mechanisms; one must confront suffering face-to-face and remain unbroken. The physician’s path is not only one of intellect but of empathy — to stand beside those who suffer, to look upon pain not as contagion but as common ground. Nuland’s lack of fear by the end of medical school was not numbness; it was acceptance born of compassion. He had seen too much of the body’s endurance, too much of the human spirit’s strength, to believe that sickness diminishes our worth. In healing others, he learned to heal his own fear.

Thus, the lesson of Nuland’s words is both simple and profound: to overcome fear, seek understanding. What we flee from in ignorance becomes our ally in knowledge. Whether it is sickness, grief, or change, the unknown loses its terror when we walk toward it with open eyes. The ancients taught their disciples that “to study life is to study death,” for only by facing the reality of our limits can we learn how to live fully. So too should we live: with humility before the mysteries of existence, with courage to face pain, and with gratitude for the fragile beauty of our days.

Let this truth be remembered: fear fades where wisdom begins. Nuland, through his journey from fear to understanding, teaches us that sickness is not an enemy to be despised but a teacher to be heard. The healer’s path — and indeed, the human path — is not to escape mortality, but to embrace it as the very condition that makes life sacred. Learn, therefore, as he did: face what frightens you; seek to understand it; and in understanding, you will find peace. For in the end, the wise do not fear the shadow of sickness or the silence of death — they honor both, as companions on the road to truth.