For some, it comes a little bit later when 30 is no longer just something that's lurking around the corner.

For the type-A personalities, the quarter-life crisis hits as soon as they turn 20, when they look around, see the Mark Zuckerbergs of this world, and start to panic.

Looking at their careers, relationships, education qualifications or finances, they ask: "Why am I not where I thought I'd be at this age?"

And others say: "I thought I would have retired by age 30."

The quarter-life crisis has been a constant topic of conversation among my peers and I as we all reflect on our 20-something status and the seemingly elusive goals we thought we would have grasped by this age.

So it was a pleasant surprise when recently I happened to come upon an old e-mail conversation between a friend and I.

Having just finished reading Alice Walker's In Search Of Our Mother's Gardens, she shared in the e-mail the following message by Walker in 1972 addressed to a group of young black women at their convocation ceremony: "Your job, when you leave here - as it was the job of educated women before you - is to change the world . the world is not good enough, we must make it better.

"But it is a great time to be a woman. A wonderful time to be a black woman. For the world, I have found, is not simply rich because from day to day our lives are touched with new possibilities, but because the past is studded with sisters who, in their time, shone like gold.

"They give us hope, they have proved the splendour of our past, which should free us to lay just claim to the fullness of the future."

The message began to almost become a mantra as I navigated the sometimes smooth and sometimes rough waters of real life after university.

But after a few months I think I began to forget about that hype as I got sucked into the very serious business of living and the onerous chore of being an adult.

Changing the world would have to take a back seat as the focus was on figuring how to make it to the end of each month; how to be an achiever; how to adjust to big-city living and overcome culture shock.

These were all tasks incompatible with changing the world when it came to the brass tacks of it all.

US sociologist Kathleen Shaputis's reference to Generation Y as the Peter Pan generation may be apt when considering how many of us are stuck between the angst of having to grow up and that of life seeming to discourage you to step out and conquer.

There are many reasons for this tension.

Many 20-something millenials find themselves simply not being able to move out of home because what money they would've spent on rent or mortgage repayments must go towards helping their parents or siblings.

Others, intimidated by the thought of leaving the safety and familiarity of varsity, choose to indefinitely prolong the student life.

Whatever the circumstance, and whether closer to the late teens or over 30, we find ourselves forgetting our noble purposes for existence on this planet and - being distracted by all the good that hasn't happened and the bad that keeps coming at us - getting caught up in the quarter-life anguish.

"Pah!" some middle-aged person listening to your existential crises says, "Wait until you have to add health problems to that list of woes."

And as annoying as people who always try to give you context while you're busy having a pity party are, they're usually right.

It's not just that if you think life is really bad, it can get worse. That kind of logic leads only to a perpetual crisis mentality.

It's that the quarter-life crisis is not the end.

The research of psychologist Dr Oliver Robinson and his team suggests that this crisis may actually be a good thing.

Identifying the four phases of the quarter-life, he defines the first as being "an illusory sense of being trapped" in a job or relationship.

"You can leave but you feel you can't," he says in a Guardian article in which he is quoted.

But it gets better in phase two where the mind shifts and it seems possible for change to happen as you dissociate yourself from the things that made you discontented.

Phase three is when life seems like a fresh start and there are new pursuits, and, in phase four, the new opportunities are developed and become part of your life.

When it comes to phasing ourselves out of the quarter-life crisis, it's all in the mind it seems.

As Maya Angelou writes in Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now, "What you're supposed to do when you don't like a thing is change it.

"If you can't change it, change the way you think about it. Don't complain."

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