Quarter Life Crisis?

Today I had coffee with one of my oldest friends and we, as usual, spent the better part of our day discussing the minutiae of our lives. A common thread turned out to be the directionless, dismal, depricating lives that most of our friends seem to be living (and that we are skirting on ourselves). What, I wonder, is the cause of this general malaise amongst our peers? Why do we gen-x babies seem so dissatisfied? Chileanchick asserted that it was the natural petering out of our hopes and dreams from childhood; the routine dusting away of stardust from our eyes. Can this be true? Is it possible that wonder and joy in day to day things simply fade away as we get older?
I posited the decidedly untrendy view that, as we move away from traditional roles in our late 20's, we find ourselves with an absence, a hole of some kind. More specifically: if you have a career that you are building, you seem to be ok; if you are still at university, you seem to be ok; if you have a life-partner and all that brings, you seem to be ok. There is something about this period (say 28-35) that cries out for something. You are no longer as young and free as you were in your early twenties but you are not yet ready to leave your wild ways. It is suddenly not acceptable to work in casual jobs, not acceptable to still be holding on to that dream, not acceptable to be all the things you never stopped being.
I am not an advocate for traditional roles. I just notice that those among us who have some deeper connection with the rest of our lives, some sense of purpose, seem to be happier. Our parents, who never had the same choices, seemed to accept their part so readily.
Nearly everyone I know seems to be struggling with the question "What do I want?". It seems so simple but hardly anyone seems to be able to answer it. We could say "I want to be rich, famous, sexy, beautiful, free" but we are also not teenagers anymore and such slight, amorphous aspirations no longer stir us from our apathy. It feels like despair, this absence of desire. And yet, for most, it feels strangely numb.
Perhaps it's the aspartame.