I think in many cases this is key. Depending on your age, either you were expected to grind it out until retirement/death or you are trying to rebel against the "grind it" mentality. Either way, it leaves one looking for something more, something meaningful and maybe something transcendental. My wife and I met in church and did the Evangelical Christianity thing in our younger days, including some time in a Pentecostal church where weekly transcendental events, like glossolalia (speaking in tongues) was encouraged. In the end, even if it was transcendental, it just seemed empty and maybe a bit performative.

We both ended up with careers we didn't really want, but we made the best of it, raised 2 well adjusted kids and used what we learned from the jobs we fell into to our advantage where possible. Along the way we came to realize maybe nothing in life is "transcendental", rather it's what you make of it.

As you say, in this modern world of Social Media, everything is amplified. Not only can I not figure out how to be better or transcendental, there are 100s of people on Instagram, or YouTube, or Facebook, or TicTok, that claim to be better and transcendental. They make me feel like a failure and the solution is whatever they are doing, or more often, what they are offering.

I don't know if my anthropologist son would agree, but I've always felt the search for something more, for something novel, for a sense of purpose, for something transcendent, is an evolutionary adaptation. Modern humans could have just stayed in Africa, occupying their niche. Instead, humans moved out and occupied nearly every corner of the earth. The downside is we're always looking for more, for different, and maybe for something transcendent.

Welcome to the forum!

EDIT: I just got How God Becomes Real on Audible to listen too, sounds interesting.