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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
Berkeley
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.
< br>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
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。
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
2
0
岁”
。没错，我告诉她“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。
< br>
But before long, my supervisor
pushed me to push Alex about her love life. I
pushed back. I said,
the
guy.
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：
“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
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
< br>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
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，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，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
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
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
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
< br>多岁的人，
因为我坚信这五千万的
20
< br>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
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，
< br>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
< br>20
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
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
“
tw
ixters
”
(twenty-m
ixters)
和“
kidults
”
(kid-adults)
。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,
have
10
extra
years
to
start
your
life
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,
says
as
long
as
I
get
started on a career by
the time I'm 30, 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。
”
But
then
it
starts
to
sound
like
this:
20s
are
almost
over,
and
I
have
nothing
to
show
for
myself. I had a better résumé the day
after I graduated from college.
like
this:
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
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.
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
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。
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 much shorter period of
time.
Many
of
these
things
are
incompatible,
and
as
research
is
just
starting
to
show,
simply
harder and more stressful to do all at
once in our 30s.
当很多事都被挤到你
30
多岁的时候，
就会有巨大压力，
在很短
的时间内快速启动一项事业，
挑一个城市，找到伴侣，生两三个孩子。这些事大多是不能
同时完成的，正如研究表明，在
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