Why is it that people of my generation seem to take so long to get their shit together - me included

Here is something from Indecision by Benjamin Kunkel a great book and one that I realised when posting the link above has been described already as "generation defining". Which is great for him, but sadly I realise I wasn't the first to divine this from his novel.

The following is a passage where the protagonist is receiving what we in Australia would call psychiatric counseling from his sister:

...."Its alright we have enough for now. Think about the Cold War - as I was saying. Remember that during certain would-be formative years you and I both imagined that full-scale Armageddon might not be far off, And therefore that..."
"But not me, I never thought it would happen. I think I thought people might not be very nice, but still, a nuclear war? I think I figured even the Russians don't suck that much. Or then again if a few of them maybe drank too much vodka one night, down in one of those silos..."
"Right. So you acknowledge there was a serious question of whether we'd live to see twenty-five. Remember adults would ask us about what we wanted to be when we grew up? And didn't you always feel like humouring them, no matter what you said? And then," Alice went on, "how it came as a shock to discover midway through prep school, with the Wall coming down, then there really was something to prepare for after all. Yet you had no plans for adult life - none. We could never imagine growing up because the future could always be cancelled at any time. So beyond a certain narrow time frame our desires ran into a kind of horizon and had to stop. There was no such thing as the long term."....

I turned 25 in 2000 and before 2000 I didn't really have a plan , hadn't even planned on having a plan. Sure marriage and kids seem like they are far off when your 17, 18, 19, 20. But I just didn't really worry about it so much, in fact to be honest I've only recently figured that I needed to think about the future. Perhaps it is because I grew up during that whole Cold War thing. Who really knows.

Mr Kunkel- if you ever, perchance, read my little blog I'd like to make the movie of your book. Perhaps a little snippet of Stings - Russians love their Children playing in that scene above and let's face it filming a movie in New York and Ecuador (where the book is based) would be great. I've never been to Ecuador but Quito used to be my "dream location" in stories that I told to people at parties - 2000ms above sea level and on the equator, permanently 25C. And evidently the cheapest place to learn Spanish...with the birthplace of evolution the Galapagos Islands just off the coast.... Yes I must get their one day.