Leaving my suburban American home to work as an LDS missionary in Rome required several lifestyle adjustments.
Years later, when I lost both my job and home in New Orleans to Hurricane Katrina, I was forced to make even more radical adjustments.
Many of us in the LDS community who are white and raised in a white-centric America are now facing an adjustment far more difficult — accepting that, despite our best intentions, we’ve learned unconscious biases that harm others.
I’ve always hated math and managed to avoid it completely while earning three English degrees. But then I decided to study biology and discovered I needed trigonometry, physics and chemistry.
So I adapted.
I still hate math.
But I can do it.
Over the years, I saw friends and coworkers with diabetes and thought I’d rather kill myself than face daily insulin injections. Then I developed diabetes and adapted.
Gradually, my diabetes worsened and I began to need two insulin injections a day.
I adapted again.
Believe me, I still hate needles. But I do what I have to do.
I taught college English for 10 years. Then I worked in a public library. Later, I worked as a bank teller. Then I worked as an equity loan processor.
Most of those changes were forced on me by external circumstances. They weren’t career goals.
But I adjusted anyway.
In our evolving economy, many of us will face similar career adjustments, even if we stay in the same job.
Maybe our spouse dies or asks for a divorce. Perhaps we’re disabled in an accident. Or we’re blessed with triplets. Maybe a relative leaves us a sizable inheritance. The reasons we’re forced to adjust in life aren’t always within our control.
After relocating to Seattle in the aftermath of Katrina, I was thrilled to find myself in a region where high temperatures in the summer were often in the low to mid-70s.
But I watched as wildfires grew worse every year. Seattle hit an all-time high of 103 in 2009, four years after I moved to the Pacific Northwest. Watching as climate change wreaked havoc in Australia, California and other areas, I kept hoping we’d escape the worst of it here.
Sure, folks here had adapted to wearing masks, even before the pandemic, to fend off smoke, but it was either that or choke. Still, I was grateful for every day we didn’t hit 80 degrees.
Recently, we hit 102. The following day, we hit 104. And the day after that, 108.
We can’t pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere every day and not expect the atmosphere to function as a greenhouse.
We either accept the existence of unintentional biases or we face police killings and nationwide protests and mass incarceration and continual unrest.
Ignoring the reality of structural and institutional racism, hoping it’ll miraculously go away on its own or that others will simply stop noticing or complaining is like pumping out more greenhouse gases as a solution for excess greenhouse gases.
Mormons adjusted when we left New York for Pennsylvania. We adjusted again when we moved to Ohio, then Missouri, then Illinois, then Utah.
Most of us adjusted when we went through the temple for the first time and committed to wearing garments for the rest of our lives.
We adjusted when the priesthood and temple ban against Blacks was lifted.
Growing up in the suburbs of New Orleans, I watched as my father put a sledgehammer and an axe in the attic. We might need to chop our way out if we were trapped by rising water.
We’re facing a convergence of crises in American life right now, and we must make disruptive adjustments to address them.
We’re in a climate crisis. And a health care crisis. And a student loan crisis.
We must tear through the roof of structural and institutional racism or drown.
I grew up with fire and tornado drills. Now I practice earthquake and active shooter drills.
Adapting isn’t a matter of morality. It’s a matter of survival.
And of far more than that — it’s a matter of thriving, as families, communities, and a nation.
If we want either personal or societal progress, we must accept the necessity of change.
And then — we already know the answer — we need to go ahead and change.
Johnny Townsend
Johnny Townsend, Seattle, is the author of several books including “Am I My Planet’s Keeper?” “This Is All Just Too Hard,” and “What Would Anne Frank Do?”
