Why must younger generations constantly ‘work on themselves’?

If I could lift one thing from younger generations, unpeel one idea from their anxious minds, it would be the notion they have to ‘work on themselves’, and that the point of life is to do this ‘work’ until they feel able to have a relationship, at which point they must grimly set about working on that.

I’m not suggesting that it’s not useful to have treatment or therapy for a particular problem, but it’s as if everyone born after 1990 thinks of themselves the way 1950s man thought of his car — as something to be worked on in every spare moment, tinkered with and polished, but rarely taken out for a spin, for fear of dents.

You can tell an era by its aphorisms. The Victorians stitched them on to footstools and tapestry samplers: ‘The Lord will provide’; ‘Charity begins at home.’ These days, they’re printed on bags, mugs, masks: ‘The best project you’ll ever work on is you!’ Or ‘Work on yourself, for yourself’. Before Christmas I tried to buy a diary for my young goddaughter, but almost every one was stamped with a version of the same horrid message. This, said to be from the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, was popular: ‘Progress is not achieved by luck or accident but by working on yourself.’ And this unattributed shocker too: ‘If you don’t work to improve yourself every day then you are wasting your life.’ No wonder the youth are depressed. If I had to read that every time I had a mug of tea, I’d be suicidal.

My spies in Gen Z tell me that there’s a new standard way to end a relationship these days. Gone is ‘Listen. It’s not you, it’s me’ and in its place ‘I just need some space to work on myself’.