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TED
演讲
《珍惜年少时光，青春一去不再来》
When I was in my 20s, I saw
my very first psychotherapy client. I was a Ph.D.
student
in
clinical
psychology
at
Berkeley.
She
was
a
26-year-old
woman
named
Alex.
记得见我第一位心理咨询顾客时，
我才
20
多岁。当时我是
Berkel
ey
临床心
理学在读博士生。我的第一位顾客是名叫
Alex
的女性，
26
岁
。
Now Alex walked into her first session
wearing jeans and a big slouchy top, and
she dropped onto the couch in my office
and kicked off her flats and told me she was
there
to
talk
about
guy
problems.
Now
when
I
heard
this,
I
was
so
relieved.
My
classmate got an arsonist for her first
client. (Laughter) And I got a twentysomething
who wanted to talk about boys. This I
thought I could handle.
第一次见面
Alex
穿着牛仔裤和宽松上衣
走进来，她一下子栽进我办公室的
沙发上，
踢掉脚上的平底鞋，
跟我说她想谈谈男生的问题。
当时我听到这个之后
松了一口气。因为我同学的第一个顾客是纵火犯，而我的顾客却是一个
20<
/p>
出头
想谈谈男生的女孩。我觉得我可以搞定。
But I didn't
handle it. With the funny stories that Alex would
bring to session, it
was easy for me
just to nod my head while we kicked the can down
the road.
但是我没有
搞定。
Alex
不断地讲有趣的事情，而我只能简单地点头认同
她
所说的，很自然地就陷入了附和的状态。
Work
happened
later,
marriage
happened
later,
kids
happened
later,
even
death
happened later. Twentysomethings like
Alex and I had nothing but time.
Alex
说：
“30
岁是一个新的
20
岁
”
。
没错，
我告诉她<
/p>
“
你是对的
”
。
工作还早，
结婚还早，生孩子还早，甚至死亡也早着呢。像
Alex
和我这样
20
多岁的人，什
么都没有但时间多的是。
But
before
long,
my
supervisor
pushed
me
to
push
Alex
about
her
love
life.
I
pushed back. I said,
it's
not like she's going to marry the
guy.
she might marry the next one.
Besides, the best
time to work on
Alex's marriage is
before she has
one.
但不久之后，我的导师就
要我向
Alex
的感情生活施压。我反驳说：
< br>“
当然她
现在正在和别人交往，她现在和一个傻瓜男生睡
觉，但看样子她不会和他结婚
的。
”
而我的导师说：
“
不着急，她也许会和下一个结婚。但修复
Alex
婚姻的最
好时期是她还没拥有婚姻
的时期。
”
That's
what
psychologists
call
an
moment.
That
was
the
moment
I
realized, 30 is not the new 20. Yes,
people settle down later than they used to, but
that
didn't make Alex's 20s a
developmental downtime.
这就是心理学家说的
“
顿悟时刻
”
。正是那个时候我意识到，
30
岁不是一个
新的
20
岁。的确
，和以前的人相比，现在人们更晚才安定下来，但是这不代表
Alex
< br>就能长期处于
20
多岁的状态。
That
made
Alex's
20s
a
developmental
sweet
spot,
and
we
were
sitting
there
blowing
it.
That
was
when
I
realized
that
this
sort
of
benign
neglect
was
a
real
problem, and it had real consequences,
not just for Alex and her love life but for the
careers and the families and the
futures of twentysomethings everywhere.
更晚安定下来，
< br>应该使
Alex
的
20
多岁成为发展的黄金时段，
而我们却坐在
那里忽
视这个发展的时机。
从那时起我意识到这种善意的忽视确实是个问题，
< br>它
不仅给
Alex
本身和她的感
情生活带来不良后果，
而且影响到处
20
多岁的人的事
业、家庭和未来。
There
are
50
million
twentysomethings
in
the
United
States
right
now.
We're
talking about 15 percent of the
population, or 100 percent if you consider that no
one's
getting through adulthood without
going through their 20s first.
现在在美国，
20
< br>多岁的人有五千万，也就是
15%
的人口，或者可以说所
有
人口，因为所有成年人都要经历他们的
20
< br>多岁。
Raise
your
hand
if
you're
in
your
20s.
I
really
want
to
see
some
twentysomethings
here.
Oh,
yay!
Y'all's
awesome.
If
you
work
with
twentysomethings,
you
love
a
twentysomething,
you're
losing
sleep
over
twentysomethings, I want to see
—
Okay. Awesome,
twentysomethings really matter.
如果你现在
20
多岁，请举手。我很想看到有
20
多岁的人在这里。哦，很好。
如果你和<
/p>
20
多岁的人一起工作，你喜欢
20
多岁的人，你因为
20
多岁的人辗转
难眠，我想看到你们。很棒，看来
20
多岁的
人确实很受重视。
So
I specialize in
twentysomethings because
I
believe that every single one of
those
50 million twentysomethings deserves to know what
psychologists, sociologists,
neurologists and fertility specialists
already know: that claiming your 20s is one of the
simplest,
yet
most
transformative,
things
you
can
do
for
work,
for
love,
for
your
happiness, maybe even
for the world.
因此我专门研究
20
多岁的人，
因为我
坚信这五千万的
20
多岁的人，
每一个
人都应该去了解那些心理学家、
社会学家、
神经学家和生育专家已经知道的事实：
你的
20
多岁是极简单却极具变化的时期之一。
你
20
多岁的时光决定了你的事业、
爱情、幸福甚至整个世界。
This
is
not
my
opinion.
These
are
the
facts.
We
know
that
80
percent
of
life's
most defining moments
take place by age 35. That means that eight out of
10 of the
decisions
and
experiences
and
moments
that
make
your
life
what
it
is
will
have happened by your
mid-30s.
这不是我的看
法。这些是事实。我们知道
80%
决定你生活的时刻发生在
35
岁之前。这就意味着你生活的重要决定、经历和突然的领悟，有
八成是在你
30
多岁之前发生的。
People who are
over 40, don't panic. This crowd is going to be
fine, I think. We
know
that
the
first
10
years
of
a
career
has
an
exponential
impact
on
how
much
money you're going to earn. We know
that more than half of Americans are married or
are living with or dating their future
partner by 30.
那些超过
40
岁的朋友不要惊慌，我想这群人会没事的。我们知
道职业生涯
的前
10
年对你将来的收入
有重大影响。
我们知道到了
30
岁的时
候，
超过半数的
美国人会结婚或者和未来的另一半同居或者约会
。
We
know that the brain caps off its second and last
growth spurt in your 20s as it
rewires
itself for adulthood, which means that whatever it
is you want to change about
yourself,
now is the time to change it. We know that
personality changes more during
your
20s than at any other time in life, and we know
that female fertility peaks at age
28,
and things get tricky after age 35.
我们知道人在
20
< br>多岁的时候大脑停止第二次也是最后一次重组，以适应成
年世界的快速发育阶段。
这就意味着不管你想怎样改变自己，
现在就是时间改变
了。我们知道在
20
多岁的时候，性格的改变多
于生命中任何时期。我们也知道
女性的最佳生育时期在
28
岁的时候达到顶峰，
35
岁之后生育变得困
难。
So your 20s are the time to educate
yourself about your body and your options.
So when we think about child
development, we all know that the first five years
are a
critical period for language and
attachment in the brain. It's a time when your
ordinary,
day-to-day life has an
inordinate impact on who you will become.
所以你的
20
多岁正是了解你自身和选择的时期。
当我们想到孩童的成长
时，
我们都知道
1-5
岁是大脑学习语
言和感知的重要时期。这个时期，日常的普通生
活都会对你的未来道路影响巨大。
But
what we hear less about is that there's such a
thing as adult development, and
our
20s
are
that
critical
period
of
adult
development.
But
this
isn't
what
twentysomethings
are
hearing.
Newspapers
talk
about
the
changing
timetable
of
adulthood.
但是我们却很少听到成年发展期，
而
我们的
20
多岁正是成年发展期的关键。
但是
20
多岁的人却听不到这些，报纸讨论的只是成年年龄界
线的变更。
Researchers
call
the
20s
an
extended
adolescence.
Journalists
coin
silly
nicknames for
twentysomethings like
we have
trivialized what is actually the defining decade
of adulthood.
研
究者称
20
多岁是延长的青春期。
记者
就引用傻傻的外号称呼
20
多岁的人，
比如
“twixters” (twenty
-mixters
)
和
“kidults”(kid
-a
dults)
。
这是真的。
作为一种文化，
我们的忽视的正是对成年起到决定性作用的十年
(
从
20
岁到
30
岁
)
。
Leonard
Bernstein said that to achieve great things, you
need a plan and not quite
enough
time.
Isn't
that
true?
So
what
do
you
think
happens
when
you
pat
a
twentysomething on the head and you
say,
Nothing
happens.
You
have
robbed
that
person
of
his
urgency
and
ambition,
and
absolutely nothing happens.
雷昂纳德
·
伯恩斯坦说过：要想取得成就，你需要一个计划和紧迫的时间。
这是大实话啊
!
所以当你拍着一个
20
多岁的人的脑袋，跟他说，
“
你有额外的
10
年去开始你的生活
”
，
你觉得这改变了什么
?
什么都没改变。
你只是夺走了那个人
的紧迫感和雄心壮志，绝对没有改变什么。
And
then
every
day,
smart,
interesting
twentysomethings
like
you
or
like
your
sons
and
daughters
come
into
my
office
and
say
things
like
this:
know
my
boyfriend's no good for me, but this
relationship doesn't count. I'm just killing
time.
Or they say,
I'll be
fine.
然后每天，那些聪明有
趣的
20
多岁的人就像你们和你们的儿子女儿一样，
走入我的办公室开始说：
“
我知道我的男朋友对我
不够好，但是我们的关系不算
数。我只是在消磨时光而已。
”<
/p>
或者说
“
每个人都告诉我只要能在
30
岁的时候开
始我的事业，这就足够了。<
/p>
”
But then it
starts to sound like this:
show for
myself. I had a better
ré
sumé
the day after I
graduated from college.
then it starts
to sound like this:
was
running
around
and
having
fun,
but
then
sometime
around
30
it
was
like
the
music turned off and everybody started
sitting down.
但
是实际听上去却是：
“
我马上就要三十了，却根本就没有东西展
示。我只
是在大学毕业时有过一份最漂亮的简历。
”
或是这样：
“
我
20<
/p>
多岁时的约会就像
找凳子。
每个人都绕着
凳子跑，
随便玩一玩，
但是快
30
的时候就像音乐停止了，
所有人开始坐下。
I didn't want
to be the only one left standing up, so sometimes
I think I married
my
husband
because
he
was
the
closest
chair
to
me
at
30.
Where
are
the
twentysomethings here?
Do not do that. Okay, now that sounds a little
flip, but make
no mistake, the stakes
are very high.
我不想成为那唯一站着的人，所以有时候我会想我和我丈夫之所以会结婚，
是因为在我<
/p>
30
岁的时候，
他是当时离我最近的那张
凳子。
在场的
20
多岁的人呐，
千万不要这样做。这个做法听起来有点轻率，但是不要犯错，因为风险很高。
< br>
When
a
lot
has
been
pushed
to
your
30s,
there
is
enormous
thirtysomething
pressure to
jump-start a career, pick a city, partner up, and
have two or three kids in a
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