When I first heard the term “aging baby boomer” a few years ago, I didn’t think too much about it. Then I heard it again and again, and now, thousands of us everyday who were born between 1946 and 1964 are reaching the 50- and 60-year-old milestones.

How did this happen? How did I and my friends become aging baby boomers.

I think back to my long, ankle-length granny gowns, and equally long blond hair of the 1960s. We were going to not only rebel against everything that our parents had believed, but we were going to change the world at the same time.

How could we become aging?

I’m sure our parents probably thought the same thing, although they were quieter than we were. They were members of the “silent generation,” and oh so uncool, but so strong.

Now, we’re the aging ones. And the next generation looks at us much like we looked at our parents.

But we’re still cool, we’re still trying to change the world. More of us everyday are getting involved politically, joining environmental and political groups, still believing in the idealism of our youth, still trying to make the world a better place and not sitting back and letting others do it.

We’re finding interests once reserved for the younger people, starting exercise routines, traveling places we never thought we would, particularly at our advanced ages, trying new things, and still listening to the Beatles, Neil Diamond, and others of the 1960s and 1970s. But while we listen to these popular musicians, which I have found many people in the 20s and 30s also enjoying, we have expanded our interests to world music, world religions, world art, and anything that takes in cultures not only from our own backyards, but from Africa, Asia and other once alien societies.

Our world has become so much smaller. I have friends who have traveled to Iran, Japan, Botswana and Uzbekistan. It’s not just Europe anymore. And who do they see there? Other “aging baby boomers,” who want to see the world, to see how others live.

We learn about what’s happening across the world in a split second through television and Internet. We correspond with our friends and relatives through e-mail, although I still love writing and getting letters.

I remember my mom and dad talking about the Depression and World War II and the sacrifices all had to make. I wonder if our nation could do that today.

Now, my history is shown almost exclusively in black and white of the 1960s protests, the Vietnam War, the first landing on the moon, and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Anyone of a certain age will remember precisely where they were when Kennedy was shot, or Neil Armstrong landed on the moon.

But this is all history. It never ceases to amaze me.

Being an aging baby boomer isn’t all that bad, though. I continue to marvel at all that I know and all that I don’t. That my generation made it possible for women and people of non-white races to enter nearly any career that we choose.

When I start to feel nostalgic for the supposedly good old days, I stop and think just how much better off nearly all people, at least in our country, are now than we were 40 years ago. More freedoms, longer and healthier lives, more choices, more to learn, more to do, and fewer barriers of any kind. In most cases, we are restrained only by our own minds.

And getting older isn’t all that bad, either. I believe, as some have said, that age 60 is the new 40. It’s all a matter of perspective and desire.

At each milestone, 50, 55, 60, and 65 a few other benefits kick in such as discounts at movie theaters and other places of entertainment, meals, and my newest discovery – cheap McDonald’s coffee.

What a fabulous life.