作者简介：Meg Jay是一名专门研究20多岁的临床心理学家，她是弗吉尼亚大学临床助理教授，在弗吉尼亚的夏洛茨维尔有一家私人诊所。她获得了加州大学伯克利分校在性别研究领域的临床心理学博士学位，并以优异的成绩获得了弗吉尼亚大学心理学本科文凭。

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. 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. And I got a twentysomething who wanted to talk about boys. This I thought I could handle.

当我20几岁时，我见到了我的第一个需要精神疗法的病人。当时我是一个在伯克利大学读临床心理学的Ph.D学生。她是一位叫Alex的26岁女性。第一次会面时Alex穿了牛仔裤以及略微不修边幅的上衣，进来后直接坐到我办公室中的沙发上，踢掉她的鞋子，然后跟我说她是来跟我讲男性问题的。当我听到这个时，我松了一口气。我的一个同学的第一个病人是一个纵火犯。所以说我有一个二十几岁的人想跟我谈谈男生。我以为我能处理好这事。

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. "Thirty's the new 20," Alex would say, and as far as I could tell, she was right. Work happened later, marriage happened later, kids happened later, even death happened later. Twentysomethings like Alex and I had nothing but time.

但我没能办到。Alex在每一次会面时都会带来好笑的故事，因此对我而言点点头，不断拖延出结果的时间是一件非常轻松的事情。Alex会说“三十就是新的二十”，而且就我知道的，她是对的。工作要以后才有，结婚以后才有，孩子以后才有，连死亡都是以后才有。像Alex和我一样是二十几岁的人除了时间外一无所有。

But before long, my supervisor pushed me to push Alex about her love life. I pushed back.

但没过多久，我的监督就催我开始推动Alex的爱情生活。我拒绝了。

I said, "Sure, she's dating down, she's sleeping with a knucklehead, but it's not like she's going to marry the guy."

我说：“没错，她现在在约会，她和一个笨蛋同床，但这并不表示她会和他结婚。”

And then my supervisor said, "Not yet, but she might marry the next one. Besides, the best time to work on Alex's marriage is before she has one."

然后我的监督说：“现在还没，但她可能会和下一个这样的人结婚。再说，在Alex的婚事上花费精力的最好时间就是在她结婚之前。”

That's what psychologists call an "Aha!" 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. 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 twenty somethings everywhere.

这就是心理学家们所说的“原来如此！”瞬间。在那一瞬间，我明白了三十岁并不是新的二十岁。没错，人们比以前更晚安顿下来，但这并不说明Alex的二十几岁这个时间段是她的发展低谷。这使Alex的二十几岁一个发展的良好时期，而我们就坐在那儿荒废它。这时我才明白这种“善意的疏忽” 是一个非常现实的问题，而且它有严重的后果，不仅是对于Alex和她的爱情生活，也对于各地的二十几岁的人的家庭与未来。

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.

现在美国有大约5千万二十几岁的人。这大概是总人口的15%，或者说100%如果你考虑到 没人能在不经历二十几岁这个阶段的情况下经过成人期。

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.

如果你是二十几岁的话举一下手。我非常想在这儿看到一些二十几岁的人。太好了！你们都棒极了。如果你和二十几岁的人工作，如果你爱一个二十几岁的人，如果你因为二十几岁的人而失眠，我就想看到——好的。棒极了，二十几岁的人非常重要。

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.

我专门研究二十几岁的人，因为我相信这5千万个二十几岁的人中，每一个都应该知道每一个心理学家，社会学家，神经学家以及生育专家都知道的：那就是把握你的二十岁这一个阶段是最简单的，但又是最有影响力的，能为你的职业，爱情，幸福，甚至是全世界做的事。

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 "Aha!" moments that make your life what it is will have happened by your mid-30s. 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. 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. So your 20s are the time to educate yourself about your body and your options.

这不是我的观点。这是事实。我们知道一个人的一生中的80%的最重要的时刻发生在35岁。这就意味着每10个决定你的生命会是什么样的的经历与“原来如此！”时刻中有8个发生在三十岁中旬。超过40岁的人，别慌。我估计这个观众没问题。我们知道一份职业中的前10年对于你将会挣多少钱有非常大的影响。我们知道超过一半的美国人30岁之前就和终生伴侣结婚，同居，或者在约会。我们知道大脑在你二十几岁时，为了适应成人期，达到第二次也是最后一次成长期的高峰，这说明无论你想改变你自己的什么，现在就是改变它的时间。我们知道相比人生其他阶段，二十岁时的个性变化最大，而且我们也知道女性的繁殖能力在28岁时达到峰顶，到35岁之后事情就有点难办了。因此你的二十几岁这个时间段就是告诉自己的身体状况以及未来的选择的时候。

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. 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.

因此当我们说到儿童发展，我们都知道前5年是大脑发展语言和爱慕的关键时期。这是一个你的每日生活都会对你的未来产生巨大影响的时间段。但是我们听到的比较少的就是有一个东西叫成人发展，而我们的二十岁这个阶段就是成人发展的关键时期。

But this isn't what twentysomethings are hearing. Newspapers talk about the changing timetable of adulthood. Researchers call the 20s an extended adolescence. Journalists coin silly nicknames for twentysomethings like "twixters" and "kidults." It's true. As a culture, we have trivialized what is actually the defining decade of adulthood.

但这并不是二十几岁的人所听到的。报纸在描述成人的时间表的变更，研究人员把二十几岁叫做延长的青春期。新闻记者在给二十几岁的人附加愚蠢的外号，比如“中间者”和“成年儿童”。这是真的。作为一种文化，我们把实际上是成人期中最重要的一个十年列为不重要的东西。

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, "You have 10 extra years to start your life"? Nothing happens. You have robbed that person of his urgency and ambition, and absolutely nothing happens.

伦纳德伯恩斯坦说过如果想办成大事，就需要一个计划和不足够的时间。这不对吗？所以说当你拍一个二十几岁的人的头然后说：“你还有额外的十年才开始生活”时你认为会发生什么？什么也不会发生。你剥夺了那个人的紧迫感以及志向，但是什么都没发生。

And then every day, smart, interesting twentysomethings like you or like your sons and daughters come into my office and say things like this: "I know my boyfriend's no good for me, but this relationship doesn't count. I'm just killing time." Or they say, "Everybody says as long as I get started on a career by the time I'm 30, I'll be fine."

然后每天就有像你们的儿子或者女儿一样，既聪明又有趣的二十几岁的人，跑到我的办公室跟我说“我知道我的男朋友对我一点好处都没有，但这段感情不算数。我只是在消耗时间。” 或者是“大家都说只要我在30岁之前开始我的职业就没问题。”这一类的话。

But then it starts to sound like this: "My 20s are almost over, and I have nothing to show for myself. I had a better résumé the day after I graduated from college."

但后来他们就开始讲：“我的二十岁快结束了，但我没什么可以展现的。我毕业那天最好写写自己的简历。”

And then it starts to sound like this: "Dating in my 20s was like musical chairs. Everybody was running around and having fun, but then sometime around 30 it was like the music turned off and everybody started sitting down. 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."

之后他们开始讲：“二十几岁时的约会就像玩抢座位游戏。大家跑来跑去，乐在其中，但到30岁左右音乐就停掉了，大家一个接一个开始坐下。我不想成为唯一一个站着的人，因此有时候我觉得我和我丈夫结婚的原因就是因为在我30岁时他是距我最近的‘椅子’。”

Where are the twentysomethings here? Do not do that.

这里的二十几岁的人在哪儿？别做这种事。

Okay, now that sounds a little flip, but make no mistake, the stakes are very high. 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.

好吧，刚才那听起来可能有一点轻浮，但是别搞错，在这里筹码非常高。当很多事情被推到三十几岁再做时，在你的三十岁这个阶段就有在极短的时间内开始一个职业，挑选一个城市，找到一个伴侣，并且生几个孩子的巨大压力。这些事情中有很多是不兼容的，而且就如研究开始表明，在三十几岁这个阶段同时完成这么多事的压力以及难度实在是太大了。

文中生词：

Benign：adj.

1) (formal) (of people 人 )kind and gentle; not hurting anybody 善良的；和善的；慈祥的

2) (medical 医) (of tumours growing in the body 体内生长的肿瘤)not dangerous or likely to cause death 良性的 OPP malignant

Transformative：adj.有改革能力的，变化的，变形的;

Tricky：adj. (形势、工作等)复杂的, 棘手的；狡猾的, 诡计多端的；机警的;足智多谋的；微妙的;难处理的

Trivialized：v.<贬>使显得琐碎[不重要、不难等]，轻视( trivialize的过去式和过去分词 )

Incompatible：adj.

1) ~ (with sth) two actions, ideas, etc. that are incompatible are not acceptable or possible together because of basic differences（与某事物）不一致，不相配

2) two people who are incompatible are very different from each other and so are not able to live or work happily together （与某人）合不来，不能和睦相处

3) ~ (with sth) two things that are incompatible are of different types so that they cannot be used or mixed together （与某物）不匹配；配伍禁忌的；不兼容；互斥的

原文转自：Ted Talk

原文链接：http://www.ted.com/talks/meg_jay_why_30_is_not_the_new_20

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