TED演讲稿-20岁光阴不再(中英互译)

2021年1月25日发(作者：affective)
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.
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。


was right. 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“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,
a knucklehead, but it's not like she's going to marry the guy.
then my supervisor said,
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：“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 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
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
Al ex
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
2 0
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
2 0
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
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
It's true. As a culture, 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
“twix ters”
(twenty- mixters)
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 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:
doesn't count. I'm just killing time.
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。
”
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:
have nothing to show for myself. I had a better ré
sumé
the day after I
graduated from college.
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.
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< br>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 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< br>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