Tomorrow is a widely celebrated U.S. holiday.

I am traveling for a half-day tomorrow to visit my parents, where I grew up, outside a rural backwood town in the United States. If not for getting my parents Starlink a few years ago, there would be little connectivity because cell phones don’t work there, and the few available ISPs have plans with ridiculous prices and even more ridiculous total bandwidth caps. 

I worked alongside brave and dedicated people in another nation 15 and 20 years ago. This work environment entailed daily threats to all lives via gunfights and improvised explosive devices that would tear your vehicle to shreds. I was able to go home to a safer environment. Some of those brave people were local nationals who were unable to leave their homeland when the US abruptly transitioned the security back to the fledgling nation and withdrew, which ushered back the harsh rule of those the US deposed decades before. 

I am fortunate because of where I was born. There has never been a way for me to send monetary support to those partners who endured the harsh conditions with me. Now, I can transmit support through a satellite connection in the middle of nowhere to the opposite side of the planet, and they receive that support in seconds. I can send it from a first-world country to someone I care about in a third-world country in seconds without an intermediary. Without a bank being involved or holding transactions for days. Without a radical regime intercepting or punishing the recipient for participating in the transaction.

I am thankful for the situation I was born into and the technological advancements the world is creating to enable such possibilities.