If you don't agree, check out stats from Google Books NGram Viewer that displays how phrases have occurred in a corpus of books over a timeline, from as early as the 16th century. Let's start with familiar concepts to get an idea of how our concerns evolved in time:
Virtue is going downhill since 1800s.
Self-ishness on the rise.
Love was winning over money until the beginning of the century where it stumbled around the depression and WW2. Hippies changed the scene around 60s until capitalism retook the stage for about 20 years, and nowadays we're luckily falling back in love.
Poverty wasn't very popular until 60s but since then we're thinking more about making the poor lot poorer richer.
And, back to our topic, we increasingly don't know what to do with ourselves.
How is that possible? Today we have THE WORLD at our fingertips. Less amount of limitations, vast amount of possibilities... Less wars, more education... Less hierarchy, more "democracy"... Less mystery, more science... Less isolation, more x-border experiences... How can we not have a better sense of what to do in this life compared to past? And I'm not just talking about what to do about big-life-fillers like choosing schools, jobs, religions, partners; they are fairly constant. I'm talking about the feeling of being lost, the feeling of being stuck in time with no sense of the future. We talk about "the search for ourselves" and "the search for our passion" over and over for days and months and years. After 6 o'clock, we're feeding on yogas, tangos, sports, projects, and photos; rushing from one hobby to another, one url link to another, consuming every piece of experience. Faced with the paradox of choice, we are paralyzed when given many choices. None of them works, none of them is "it". There must be something else, something better. Everyone is sure that they have a huge potential for this something that they haven't figured out yet, but will. We absurdly expect an "aha" moment every 5 seconds that will take us closer to this nowhere-to-be-found destination in vain. When the external world of expensive courses doesn't meet our expectations, we turn inwards in psychotherapy, aroma therapy, psychology, self-questioning... fucking our subconsciousness, hoping to find inborn clearcut answers to impossible questions. We're searching for meaning in the garbage bin, waiting for a sign, waiting for a perfect-fit life that shines through time.
