I think this comment makes a lot of sense coming from a man in his early 50s. Gen x and y are a little bit opposite though in the sense that they are constantly trying to find more fulfillment out of life and changing lifestyle/social groups/careers so often that gen x and gen y rarely actually get to a point of attaining or sustaining the happiness and fulfillment that they are looking for.

A big part of the problem is that, that is exactly what we were told as kids. I'm gen x and it was bad in ours and worse in y.

"Follow your dreams!"
"You can be whatever you want to be"

Statements like these, that most parents/grade school teachers feed their kids/student are imo a fairly large issue. Because the fact is, that is a straight up lie. Very few people actually end up doing what they dreamed of doing as a kid. Granted, being superman when you grow up is a fairly lofty goal, even the more seemingly realistic dreams of kids are almost always destined to fail.

Another issue is that we degrade and condescend lines of work we actually need, ie plumbing and food service, and the reality is, not everyone can be a doctor or lawyer. And it's a problem that we falsely give hope to tons of new college entrants, when probably, a good portion of the time, their time and money wouldve have been better spent on learning a trade. I don't even want to count the amount of people I personally know off the top of my head that went to/paid for college and law school only to be bartending/managing restaurants, etc. Literally, 7-9 years of school after high school and several hundred thousand dollars to be working jobs they could have gotten out of high school.

Desirable job markets are so flooded that only people with connections(like daddy got you your first law job as his firm) or that are so far ahead of the game they don't need them are actually getting the jobs they went to all tat school for.

It's who you know, not what you do/know these days.