If you are not a gardener, you may wonder why gardening hobby has become so popular even with city people who have the resources to go to the grocery and get food with much less effort.

Perhaps much of the joy that comes from gardening originated in your baby boomer values that came from those golden “hippie” days of the 1960s.

Part of the ethical and moral system of that time in our cultural history was the “back to the land” movement to get back to your roots and away from the alleged sins of modern society.

From this same movement you got the increased interest in vegetarianism, yoga, natural eating and the environmental movement.

So, while you look back with a bit of chagrin on the idealism and sometimes radical values that this era of baby boomer history represents, there are some very good lifestyle choices that came from that era of your shared lives. And the love of gardening is one of the good things you kept from that time.

Gardening is a hobby that is unique among pastimes because virtually nothing bad can come of it.

Baby boomers are a very creative people. But so often the demands of career and raising a family leave little time for creativity in your middle age years.

But as more baby boomers complete their years of service in their careers and move toward retirement, they have plenty of energy and creativity left for a new passion in life, one that expresses all that creativity of their youth.

This is one reason we have seen such an explosion of craft fairs in the country which provide an outlet for all of that creative talent baby boomers are expressing through their arts and craft.

The great thing about crafts shows is you can start wherever you are in your creative arts and continue to grow and become more skilled each passing year.

To get started, you should take on this new hobby and small business with the same enthusiasm and passion you did when you were employed in your former career.

That is the great thing about baby boomers having this kind of free time in the retirement years. There is so much talent and energy available that to not make it available to the public would be a crime.

The phenomenon of a worker who has been in the work force for 40 years suddenly starting a new career at 50 or over is a trend that is exploding, as boomers hit that age bracket.

There has always been a phenomenon of older workers trying something new but the trend has hit such a new high in the baby boomer retirement picture. So you have to wonder what about boomers makes them want to start new careers late in life.

Part of it has to do with the way business has functioned in the last few decades.

In your parents working years, the norm was to work for the same company and be a “company man” for 40-50 years, get that old watch and retire with a handsome retirement package. That formula just doesn’t work any more.

For one thing, retirement plans supported by employers have become a thing of the past. Savings for retirement have plummeted as the financial demands of life are all most people can keep up with.

So the concept of working on into what used to be called retirement years is now a given if for no other reason than financial necessity.

“On the Road” is a well known phrase to baby boomers because it is the title of that famous novel by Jack Kerouac of youthful exploration and curiosity.

And even though technically Kerouac represented the generation before the time of the boomers, that novel very much became a bible for the youth movement that exploded during the 1960s when the boomers went through their teen and college years.

As a result, there is wanderlust and a yearning to get away from it all and travel that is deeply ingrained in the boomers mentality and way of viewing the world.

It isn’t surprising then that baby boomers as adults have created a leisure and travel industry that has reached new levels of popularity in the last three decades.

So nobody would be surprised either when we see boomers in their early retirement years begin to look into becoming the ultimate wanderers by hitting the road in their RVs and staying on the go virtually nonstop.

Adventures of boomers on the road

The spirit of adventure and desire not only to see and be part of the expanse of this glorious country has a lot to do with the yearning to travel that is so common in modern day baby boomers.

Boomer loves the theater. Good reason. The theater has always been an art form that teaches the love of culture and values that were important to boomer when they were enjoying those explosive years of youth during the 50s and 60s.

Boomer can see the influence of the stage even in the clothing and ways of expressing themselves that the “hippies” demonstrated when they were at their zenith.

The love of the stage and culture that has become wide spread in the boomer culture also reflects that this has always been a very well educated generation.

The fact that such a big percentage of boomers either had some exposure to the arts in college themselves or from their parents has been a healthy thing for preserving this important part of society throughout the time this generation has been in charge.

For many boomers the stage has held a fascination that is more than just watching a good play and being a good patron of the arts.

Many feel that there is a performer inside them that wants to become part of theater history by getting up there and acting in a play with all the joys and terrors that such a big step would mean.

Boomer is tremendously health conscious. That means that they are, as a group, boomer is highly aware of health issues and the need for plenty of exercise and a lifestyle that includes good diet as well.

But there is a big difference between being health conscious and becoming active in a healthy lifestyle.

Many times boomer may be well aware of what they SHOULD do to be healthier so they can live a longer and healthier life but following through on those goals is much more difficult than just knowing about them.

This is why having a partner in working out and making healthy decisions can make all the difference in the world.

Boomers have seen a lot of changes to the marriage relationship occur over the years. This is not just because of women’s liberation.

It also comes from huge changes to way the work world functions as well as new parenting models and cultural shifts that have called for a real partnership in a marriage to cope with the new world boomer live in.

That is why the marriage partner is the best possible choice for someone to encourage you along in your path to a healthier lifestyle.

The one thing that virtually all baby boomers have in common is the stress of living in this modern age.

So much has changed for baby boomers since they first enjoyed those days of youth culture when hairstyle and rock music seemed like the most important things in the world.

But, like all generations before them and to come, baby boomers had to grow up and take on the responsibilities of raising a family, making a living and figuring out their place in this big complicated world.

Stress comes from a lot of sources. Obviously, baby boomers get it from work. Baby boomers think of the work place as a source of stress because it is a place where making a living is paramount and there are daily demands, deadlines and schedules to be met.

In addition, most of you have to deal with at least some difficult people during your workdays, which only compound the stress.

But stresses don’t end when you walk out of your workplace. Traffic itself can be a stress. Then the joys of raising children and marriage can also bring some trials with them as well.

Baby boomers may not have a corner on the market for an urgent desire to stay youthful but they certainly have set a high standard for creating a virtual avalanche of products and services to attend to that need.

Baby boomers-quest to look and feel young

The quest to look young in baby boomers has resulted in an explosion of profits in the cosmetic and plastic surgery markets. It’s easy to criticize the desire of baby boomers to want to see them as youthful as simple vanity. But it goes a lot deeper than that.

It doesn’t take a lot of research or analysis to see that baby boomers grounded their identities in the youth movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Before the baby boomers generation erupted like a generational volcano, there really was no youth movement.

But in the 1960s, when youth culture virtually took over American and indeed world culture, everything changed for baby boomers and that change was never really reversed.

The culture of that time that now seems very long ago was one of the adoration of youth. That desire to put age on a pedestal and worship everything about being young has permeated the culture even as the baby boomers generation moved into middle age and now is on the verge of creating the largest retirement generation ever.

If there ever was a baby boomers “issue” that has become engrained into the heart and psyche of a generation, it is an aversion to war due to the horrific experience of Vietnam.

While a relatively small percentage of surviving baby boomers actually went to and fought in Vietnam, the scar on the national psyche was so deep that it has influenced the way baby boomers have thought about war and how they selected their government representatives for over 30 years.

This is in stark contrast to the way the parents of the Baby Boomer generation viewed warfare and the use of the country’s military might.

Because World War II was such a necessary conflict and winning it would be the difference between a world of freedom or domination by a cruel dictator, that fight had nobility and a clear cut purpose to it.

So when you, as Americans, banded together to defeat Nazi Germany and her allies, it was an act of world changing sacrifice and nobility that shaped the baby boomer generation.

To the parents of baby boomers, warfare in a noble cause was the highest calling of a nation and part of your national pride.

Baby boomers are no strangers to worry. It seems from the first decade baby boomer generation began to become aware of the world; there were big things to worry about.

This was the first baby boomer generation to grow up with a reality that world destruction is possible at the hands of a man made weapon that did exist and was pointed at them.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the decades when baby boomer generation was entering youth, it was common for children to have to run drills to hide under their desks as a defense against the arrival of a nuclear bomb.

Even back then, those baby boomer generation children know those desks were faint defense against such a devastating weapon.

So from worrying about the draft, the bomb, Vietnam or about corruption in government, boomers grew up as a baby boomer generation of worriers. Of course, worry is endemic in the human psychology.

And as baby boomer generation grew into adults, parents and the ones who would come to take leadership in the world, those worries of youth paled compared to the new responsibilities they faced.