Out With The Old, In With The New
by Terri Bynoe

If you are reading this, it is fair to assume that you as have I, survived the holidays. Not only that, but because it's the start of a new year, you have also wiped the slate clean. Here we are welcoming another New Year’s Day -- a milestone repeated around the world time and time again. A time to measure accomplishments and reassess priorities. A time to take stock of the past and look forward to the future.

Once again, an opportunity to start afresh. Let's see. This year, I will purchase only organic fruits, vegetables and body care products. I will eat only free range poultry and eggs. I will buy only farm-raised fish. Jogging will become a regular part of my morning routine. My car and my purse will be organized at all times and I will put all loose change in a particular place so it doesn't pile up between the sofa cushions. I will park further away from the shopping mall entrance so I can enjoy walking for health while also protecting my car door from unnecessary dings. I will take my vitamins. I will floss twice daily and I will not let a single dirty dish stay in the kitchen sink overnight.

Yeah, yeah, right. I have celebrated enough January firsts to know better. Nevertheless, resolutions will be made just the same, and my determination will be strong as always. However, like many others, with a nod to reality, I know that by month’s end I may conveniently forget that I made any resolutions at all. I won't be able to remember where I tossed the Richard Simmons Sweatin' to the Oldies exercise video, much less actually be outside jogging in February's sub-zero temperatures as the sun rises. Isn't running on pavement bad for your knees anyway? Don't even the healthiest people sometimes just drop dead while jogging? More excuses, I know.

But there is perhaps one resolution that cannot wait until next year like some of the others. According to an Internet report I read recently, spending more time with family and friends is the number one New Year's resolution, followed by fitness routines and a desire to tame the bulge (might as well look good and be healthy as was we strengthen our familial bonds). But notwithstanding our resolve to spend more time with loved ones, statistics continually show that as families, we are spending less and less time together. Parents are overextended and children are overscheduled. Our lives are much more complicated than our parents' lives and their parents' lives before them.

While we are more technically linked, we are less emotionally connected. Our beepers, laptops, Palm Pilots, Blackberries and cell phones allow us to stay in touch, but with all the reaching out we are doing, it seems we are really touching less. Cell phones ring incessantly while we are trying to share an intimate meal with a loved one. Our computers facilitate education and promote knowledge, but our kids spend more time instant messaging each other than they do exploring and appropriating the vast amount of knowledge available on the Internet.

Don’t get me wrong, technology is an important and necessary part of culture today and I do not mean to single it out as the only reason for our disconnect. It is certainly not. As a matter of fact, I embrace it. After all, it is the medium by which we are presently communicating. Just the same, however, it is also one of the many constant distractions we must endure, and it does interfere with our family time -- without a doubt. So, we must creatively combat its interference.

Like the statistics show, I do resolve this year to spend more time with my family. I suspect they will top my list for as many years as I am allowed. But in so doing, I will take a closer look at the way I use new technologies in my life, and the way my family members use them, to make sure that instead of being slaves to technology, we ensure that technology is our slave.

I challenge you to do the same.

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Terri Bynoe earned a BA from the University of South Carolina with a concentration in Psychology while raising 3 boys. She puts her professional training and keen sense of "what makes people tick" to good use in her home, community and anyplace else where she can edify and encourage others. Together with her husband, an emergency room trauma surgeon, Terri serves on several non-profit and charitable boards and is making a positive difference in her Columbia, South Carolina community.