That's not the point of the quote. The point is it's hard to find a larger purpose/cause worth striving for in life. In the past, we had WWI and WWII where almost everyone was in it together, even if you weren't in the front lines. Your parents probably centered their whole lives around just making it financially if they were immigrants.

Whereas today, we don't have a great war, or any cause that makes us feel as we're part of something greater than ourselves. We have to come up with our own things to strive for, and sometimes these don't go as planned, or depend a bit on luck and circumstances. I.e. starting a startup or finding love.