An editorial in three parts

Abstract

The prospect of writing an editorial for a themed issue on Covid-19 for New Horizons in Adult Education and Human Resource Development made me instantly tired. Why? Because every day I wonder if I will lose a loved one to Covid-19. Because every day I wonder if my family members who fled Ukraine as refugees will be able to return home. Because every day I wonder if my family members in Ukraine will survive Russia's invasion. Because every day I wonder if one of my family members who are Black will be victims of racist violence. Why does the prospect of writing an editorial make me tired in the face of these worries? Because I do not want to face questions like: What does this mean for adult education? And what does this mean for HRD? I cannot face these questions because the honest answer is right now, I do not care. I care about survival, and advancing academic discourse seems like a far distant concern. I would like to lie and say that the multiple themed issues that have emerged regarding Covid-19 and our field over the past few years (Byrd, 2021;Hughes & Niu, 2021;Smith et al., 2021) give me hope. But they don't. I would like to lie and say that adult education and human resource development (HRD) might respond to Russia's war of aggression with research that will help strengthen the Ukrainian resistance, but I do not think that is actually going to happen. And I would like to lie and say I believe that the outpouring of writing regarding racial justice since Floyd's murder (