It seems like it was in a galaxy long ago and far away when we could rubber stamp our thanks from years past: for family, friends and health. This Thanksgiving, we have to dig a little deeper, don’t we? And that’s never a bad thing, so I’ll give thanks for that, for starters.
While the pandemic has brought untold misery, trouble and inconveniences galore across the country, it has also brought a retrenching, a reassessment of what’s important and what truly sustains us individually and collectively. Privately, personally, we’ve had our own journeys through this uncharted territory, this terra incognita, and have been impacted, moved and changed in ways we could have never anticipated. I will leave it to you, dear readers, to sort that out for yourselves and find the rays of enlightenment that have peeked through those stormy skies over these past nine months. I know I, for one, will never underestimate the power of a simple hug again. So there’s another thanks.
But the thanks we share as an industry should not be the simple fact that we’re in a profession that is still going strong. We all have friends in education and the food service, travel, hotel, entertainment sectors that remind us of our good fortune in that regard. We can find our gratitude in being a helpful presence in a time of need. Connecting people has never been more important than it is today and we should feel grateful, if not honored, that it is the collective efforts, intelligence, know-how and downright street smarts of this particular body of women and men that make that happen.
The wireless infrastructure industry can be thankful for the tower workers of America whose bravery, which has never been a question, has been taken up a notch. They can’t do their job from home behind the safety of a desk and a computer screen. Their cat jumping on their keyboard during an important zoom call is not a high-on-their-list concern for them. Their checklist of precautions now entails protecting themselves from unseen microbes in addition to making sure their fall arrest system is in good working order. Like any front line workers, the world is depending on them while wishing them strength and good health to do their jobs well.
We are in an industry that I hope is, quite simply, thankful to be of service to our fellow human beings.
By Jim Fryer, Inside Towers Managing Editor
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