by Ben Sharpton

Created on: September 26, 2008   Last Updated: November 01, 2008

Family Matters

I pen this piece on my 55th birthday. As one who is precisely at the half-way point through this generational decade, I feel uniquely qualified to understand what my peers wrestle with the most.

We have a lot on our minds. We worry about the economy and whether we'll have enough saved for retirement. We fondly remember the past; the cars we drove, the schools we attended and the music we listened to. We think about our faith and how it has or has not affected our lives. We worry about the direction our country is heading and how things might progress or digress in the future.

However, most of all, we think about our family - the ones closest and most important to us. Like others around the world and throughout time, our family is always most important. Home is where the heart is and our hearts and minds and voices are usually with those at home. More than 42% of us talk with a parent every day, according to the Pew Research Center (http://pewresearch.org/pubs/305/families-drawn-toge ther-by-communication-revolution), and almost three out of four talk with some family member who doesn't live with us.

Once upon a time, our family was physically near, so talking with a loved one was as easy as walking down the hall or next door. But our world grew and we spanned the globe, stretching the family ties of proximity. In a sense, technological advances brought us there by enabling the marketplace to extend down the street, across the nation and to other countries. It helped us break down language, transportation, economic and political barriers and allowed us to literally expand our horizons.

Some of those same technological advances also work to keep us close to those we love. We talk on cell phones, undoubtedly more than we should and in places that we shouldn't, like grocery stores, libraries, restaurants, while driving and even in bathrooms. We text our loved ones around the clock, covering everything from pickup times to politics to chats about the weather. When I travelled overseas last year, I arranged daily video conferences with my family over the internet, just to stay close.

If frequency is any indicator of importance, the frequency that we contact our family is evidence that they are ever present in our minds, as they should be.

Perhaps our family is most important simply because something has to be and family wins by default. Robert Frost once said, "Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in." It is somehow ironically comforting that we have someplace to belong, regardless of where we've been and what we've done.

For those of us in our fifties, family provides a sense of where we have come and where we are heading. It defines where we've been and where we have yet to go. It moves us and it anchors us in fascinating and exciting ways. Of all the things on our minds, families matter the most.

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