Sometimes there are things in life you just can’t do anything about.

I was reminded of that yesterday. As most of you are no doubt aware, it rained a great deal Friday night and Saturday morning. As often is the case when heavy rains come, our driveway was covered with earthworms which had surfaced, trying to escape the water. Most of you know those worms aren’t long for this world, because when the sun comes out and dries the pavement, they usually die.

My youngest, who is 8, knew this and when she saw all those worms, she ran outside, determined to collect them and find a place in the yard where she could safely return them to the soil.

After a while, she came back in the house. “There’s too many worms. I can’t save them all,” she said. All my daughter could do was save the ones she could, and then move on.

That is the way life is, often. I believe we’ve been reminded of that in recent days. Some of you may know that USA Today printed a story last week on Mount Airy, examining how the town has been hurt by the loss of the textile industry.

Todd Tucker, the president of the Surry County Economic Development Partnership, responds to that article in today’s Mount Airy News, talking a little bit about how his agency is working to overcome those job losses.

I’m not trying to steal his thunder, but I also want to say my piece regarding the article. First, I don’t think the writer painted an unflattering picture of Mount Airy. He simply showed, as much as a single story can, the effect the loss of an entire industry segment can have on a community that depends on that industry for its economic lifeblood.

The article wasn’t just Mount Airy’s story. It was the story of Martinsville, Va., It was Mayodan’s story. It is a story shared by scores of communities across the South, some of which were hurt far more by the loss of the textile industry jobs than Mount Airy has been.

The USA Today article quoted Mount Airy Commissioner Teresa Lewis as saying the community wasn’t ready for those job losses. And she is right. I believe most textile-dependent communities weren’t ready. There was no way they could have been. With the continued opening of shipping borders, with the elimination of tariffs and other fees through free trade treaties, and given the industry’s history of always following the least expensive labor costs, I don’t believe many could have foreseen the quick exit textile jobs — and furniture, and other industrial work — would make once those trade agreements were signed.

Some communities were hit earlier than Mount Airy, losing large chunks of their respective job bases in the 1990s and early part of this century. Many of those communities are still wallowing in the aftermath, with 15-, 18-, even 20-percent unemployment rates a decade after the last textile firm closed its doors.

Mount Airy can, I believe, avoid that fate and be in a good, strong position not too far down the road.

But we have to understand and embrace a few concepts. First, those jobs are gone. The textile industry will never be a significant force in the local economy. That’s not to say we don’t have some strong, important textile firms still here, because we do. But those more than 3,000 jobs lost aren’t coming back in the form of textile positions.

While a relative handful of big company closings represent most of those jobs, it will take a significant number of new companies to employ those folks. It may take five or six or ten firms to employ the same number of people who may have lost their jobs with just one or two textile plant closings. It may take a tremendous number of home-based and small businesses to replace some of the payroll lost with some single business closings in the past. And it might take even more effort and creativity to help a few dozen home-grown firms expand than it would to land a single new employer in the community.

But, that’s where we find ourselves, and there’s nothing we can do about how we managed to get to this point in our local economy. We can’t change the past, but we can surely determine the future.

If our economy is going to be vibrant and healthy, it will take people with vision and creativity, leaders who are not afraid to take chances, and criticism when some of those chances are not popular or don’t pan out.

Mount Airy and Surry County have too many good things going not to succeed. No where will you find nicer, harder-working people committed to supporting their families and helping their communities.

The quality of life is matched by few communities across America, and there are too many smart, committed people working to lead the area in an economic comeback.

As a community, if we continue to look forward, work hard and smart, and be open to new ideas, I believe Mount Airy will find itself doing quite well, and these difficult economic times will be nothing more than a bad and fading memory.