
I am proud to have grown up in Irwinville, because I know how brave and resilient my grandparents, as well as the other men and women who resettled here were. I can only imagine how scared and nervous they must have been as parents of small children, knowing that they couldn’t provide for them on their own; so, they took a leap of faith and moved to a place they had never seen to work at something they really didn’t know how to do. All because they saw an opportunity for something better. They realized that they couldn’t continue to do things the way they had always done them if they wanted to improve their lives and the lives of their children. The courage to change is much more difficult than the desire to stay the same, but if you keep doing the same thing, you get the same results. Those daring individuals who built the Irwinville community knew this, and so they were willing to put aside their fears and do something different. I think we could all learn a valuable lesson from them. Change can be hard, but I am inspired by a quote from George Bernard Shaw: "Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything." |