The scientist Jennifer Doudna’s father was an English professor. It wasn’t until he had a young daughter that he realized that almost all the books he assigned to his students were written by men. Having a daughter made him realize how acutely unfair this was, how this deprived his students of valuable perspectives and inspiration. So, as Walter Isaacson writes in his fascinating biography of Jennifer Doudna and the work that won her a Nobel Prize, her father quietly “added Doris Lessing, Anne Tyler, and Joan Didion to his syllabus.” He started bringing books home to his daughter that might inspire her too.
Like a good father (and human being), he adjusted. Not out of political correctness but out of real empathy. And what was the effect? Did he lose his spine or his manhood? Did censorship win? No, his choice made the world better! His students were better and his ability to connect with his daughter was better. Then decades later, the world became better as a result of this adjustment (you can thank Doudna and by extension her father for your family’s COVID-19 mRNA vaccine).
Don’t be frozen in time. Don’t close your mind. Be open . . . and adjust.