Do Baby Boomers Need Inspiration?

"Let us go forth, the tellers of tales, and seize whatever prey the heart long for, and have no fear. Everything exists, everything is true, and the earth is only a little dust under our feet."
- W.B. Yeats 


When I was a teenager I used to enjoy playing rock and roll on my guitar, and the amplifier assured that the neighbors would also enjoy the playing. In my later teens I also discovered Mozart, and my sister and I have a vivid memory of her running out of my parents house screaming "I've got to get out of this Mozart prison" ! I think the volume was cranked up. I was inspired then.

I am still inspired now as a baby boomer, in so many different ways.There are so many stories of near death and mystical experiences, transformations, breakthroughs, life-changing events, and inspiration out there already. There are also major challenges, a changing world, a civil war in politics, health issues, loss of loved ones, and the process of aging. An important question to ask now to our generation of almost 70 million is the following:

Do Baby Boomers Need Inspiration?

That "Mozart prison" happened fifty years ago, and yet the memory remains. As baby boomers,  (those born between 1946 and 1964),  we have "been there and done that". We are survivors and have had a wide range of experiences in life. We are the elders of all living generations after us. We provide wisdom to the younger generations of people in general and to our families. We are an active, high energy generation, and retirement to us is not watching TV all day and letting life just slip by.

We start to have those reflections on our life; memories, challenges past and current, family, retirement planning issues, and may not always enjoy a full night's sleep. Our bodies are changing, and we may have health issues. We may be happy and accept life as it is,and may feel that we do not need much more. We may also have an active life of more depth, more experiences, and more fun. Then challenges happen to us or to our families or friends. How do we choose to respond to these? We probably do the best we can for any given situation. 

Yet do we need inspiration in our lives?

How can we be inspired when we may be dealing with major health issues, issues of family, finances, politics, lifestyle, challenges of retiring, new spiritual questions about life and seeing family, friends, and others passing on? It might not be easy for some, yet maybe it is is worth taking on as a warrior if you are up to the challenge. Then again, you may already have all the inspiration that you want or need in your life. 

Have We Been Asleep for Twenty Years? It's Time to Wake Up !

At age sixty I had an epiphany that I have been sleeping for twenty years in my life, on average 8 hours per day or one third of my life. Twenty years ! Like Rip Van Winkle. That allowed me to realize that I wanted to live life even more deeply, with inspiration being one of my favorite keywords for doing so.  "Carpe Diem" became one of my favorite affirmations. Seize the day, in Latin, as used by Robin Williams in the movie Dead Poets Society, is one of my favorites. Even though I still need sleep, I try to be inspired and seize as many moments of life as I can in any given day, or night.

The Ten Benefits of Seeking and Enjoying Daily Inspiration

1) It keeps life interesting and worth living
We know that we have only so many more years available and there is no guarantee of how many. By staying inspired as much as possible life can be more interesting. How we get inspired is our own choice and preference. There are so many reasons out there. If we choose to focus on other things that are not inspiring, that is our choice also.

2) We may be able to inspire others.
By being inspired ourselves then we may be able to inspire others, no matter what age. This can take many forms but may include phone calls (yes, actual voice calls), text messages, social media posts, writing, singing, dancing, and a number of various creative expressions or all of the above. In addition to other content, Facebook timelines may have inspiring quotes, photos, and stories. By helping others to be inspired, we spread the joy and love of life, and balance out the other content that is negative.

3) It is healthy to have a positive attitude and inspiration
Living our life in good health as long as possible seems to be a goal of many baby boomers. Even if there is a health challenge, many stories have shown that the attitude about life can affect the state of health, recovery, acceptance or remission. The relationship of mind-body-spirit has become more widely accepted and various techniques have also become more popular such as meditation and yoga. Being inspired as often as possible, even as a daily lifestyle preference, helps keep us healthy in different ways, including those unseen hidden benefits similar to the quantum physics of everything being energy. The idea of a quantum physics of inspiration is inspiring in itself when we acknowledge that life has a lot more depth than we can see. 

4) It Enhances our Faith, Religion, or Spiritual Growth
If we have any type pf faith, or religion, or spiritual growth perspective in life, these can benefit as well as help to provide inspiration.The popularity of the self help industry is a sign that so many people are seeking more inspiration and ways to enhance their life.

5) Water and Music Can Provide Benefits from Inspiration
There is something about water that relates to inspiration. Whether it is the research about patterns in water being more harmonious with classical music, or the geometric beauty of a snowflake, or the peaceful presence of a waterfall, or bubbling creek, or ocean waves, water and certain music can be both a source as well as a benefit of inspiration. Just spending a few minutes or more every day in a "visual and musical meditation" of viewing beautiful photos of oceans, waterfalls, rivers, bubbling creeks, lakes, snowflakes, or snow-capped mountains with beautiful background music can be inspiring. Experiencing these in our travels can be very inspirational. Nature has plenty of colorful and engaging content to keep us inspired.

6) The Eye of the Hurricane - Staying Inspired in the Midst of Chaos 
With so much negativity out there in the news and various world events staying inspired can be a challenge. One metaphor is to be "in the eye of the hurricane", or try to maintain a peaceful center within even as turbulent winds stream around you in your life or in the news. By staying inspired, it helps us to hold that attitude within and around us as our main focus. Of course it usually cannot be held every minute, and we know when we are tossed into the emotional winds of life. Yet we can always come back into the eye of the hurricane, and know that this is a source and benefit of inspiration.

7) The Love Vibes of ex-Hippie Baby Boomers
If that subtitle got your attention there is some truth to the fact that love can be the most powerful vibe out there. Love of oneself, and others, and life in general can help us to stay inspired. We didn't need to be a hippie back in the day to carry a strong love vibe. Just listen to some of the inspiring lyrics of the songwriters back in the day. "Rejoice, rejoice, we have no choice but to carry on. Love is coming, love is coming to us all." Love and inspiration have already arrived, and even more is coming, if we choose to create this in our life to whatever extent is possible.
 
 8) Inspiration can Help with Forgiveness and Forgiveness Can Create More Inspiration
In a zen type of story that I heard years ago and have repeated to others, two priests are walking across a desert and come to a river. There is a woman there with a heavy load and the younger priest offers to carry the load across the river. Then he also offered and carried the woman across as the waters were turbulent and he was concerned for her safety. Three days later the older priest could not contain himself any longer and said to the younger priest, "you know that it is against our rules to think of a woman, and you carried her across the river!". The younger priest replied, "Yes, and I set her down three days ago. Are you still carrying her?" When we let go of things that we may have been holding inside for years it frees up that energy for more inspiration. As baby boomers we have a lot of years in which there may be a few things to let go of. Things such as resentments, memories of what other people said or did to us, and the negative experiences that we have had in our life can be released with total forgiveness. It may take some strong inspiration to open up to this, and have the courage to let go. Or we can choose to be like the older priest, and continue to carry something that we know is not needed in our life, for the rest of our life.

9)  We Deserve It
After living our life for so many years working and raising families, and experiencing the challenges of life that always seems to happen, as well as the various joys and unforgettable experiences that we will never forget, we deserve to have inspiration now and for the rest of our lives, and to have more unforgettable experiences, and to age gracefully even in these times of chaos, negative news, and change. We deserve to have the wisdom to accept the process of aging, live our life without fear, and to have the inspiration to love life no matter what challenges happen. It is sometimes easier said than done. Yet with more inspiration, maybe it will be easier to do.

10) The Inspiring Secret of Life After Death
Whether we are religious, or on a spiritual path without religion, or embrace or are skeptical about the mysteries of life after death, if we open up to all possibilities of new adventures, new amazing experiences of love, consciousness, Divine Spirit, angels, seeing those who have already passed over, and revelations of sacred mysteries, then that can be enough to keep us inspired for the rest of our life, regardless of what happens in the meantime.

Do baby boomers need inspiration? Yes, and everyone else also. Carpe Diem.

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