TED演講 | 再不瘋狂就老了？你的20多歲決定了你的後半生！

04-13

20多歲

「再不瘋狂就老了」的甜蜜光陰

20多歲的你迷茫又著急

你想要房子想要汽車

你想要旅行想要享受生活

你那麼年輕卻窺覷整個世界

……

20多歲，對於一個人來說意味著什麼？

20多歲，到底應該幹什麼？

這大概是20多歲的人都在想的問題

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二十多歲是決定你人生的十年

20多歲對一個人而言，是最容易對感情、幸福、事業，甚至世界形成革命性影響的時期。

2013年，Meg Jay在TED大會上的演講「為什麼30歲不是新的20歲」將近播放六百萬次，成為那一年TED大會上最受矚目的演講之一。該次TED演講被《紐約時報》、《今日美國》、《洛杉磯時報》譽為「最實用派」的人生規劃，是TED國際公開課點擊排名No.1的人生規劃神課，官網上傳5天分享達60萬次。全球TED粉絲淚目評論：給我20-29歲鬱悶期最系統的科學解答。

【TED2013】Meg Jay：20歲，不可揮霍的光陰 - 騰訊視頻【TED2013】Meg Jay：20歲，不可揮霍的光陰 - 騰訊視頻【TED2013】Meg Jay：20歲，不可揮霍的光陰 - 騰訊視頻 https://v.qq.com/x/page/m0126e1q40a.html

Key Points

twentysomething

[twentis?mθi?]

n. 二十多個；二十多歲

adj. 二十多個的；二十多歲的

rob of

搶劫（同義： hijack/heist）

短語

rob sb of sth 搶劫某人某物 ; 搶某人 ; 搶去某人的 ; 搶奪某人的某物

rob sth of sb 搶某人的

ROB run of book 由編輯隨意編插的廣告

造句示例：

搶劫；盜取；偷竊：The thief robbed me of my watch. 小偷把我的表偷走了。

剝奪；使失去：Television has robbed the cinema of its former popularity. 電視使電影不像過去那樣受歡迎了。

huddle

英 [h?d(?)l] 美 [h?dl]

vt. 把...擠在一起；使縮成一團；草率了事

vi. 蜷縮；擠作一團近義詞gather up, cower

n. 擁擠；混亂；雜亂一團

短語

trading huddle 秘密交易會議

huddle formation 亂堆在一起

huddle around 擠在周圍

造句示例：He huddled his books in the corner.他把書胡亂堆積在一角。

post

英 [p??st] 美 [post]

n. 崗位；郵件；標杆

vt. 張貼；公布；郵遞；布置

vi. 快速行進

造句示例：I saw her step the street and disappear into the post-office. 我看見她在街上步行，進了郵局就不見了。

intentional

英 [?nten?(?)n(?)l] 美 [?nt?n??nl]

adj. 故意的；蓄意的；策劃的

四六級寫作推薦關鍵辭彙及短語 ... 具體的specific; tangible 刻意的intentional; on purpose; intended 費時間去了解…take time to acquaint oneself with…...

造句示例：Yeah, but probably an intentional one. 正確，但很有可能是故意的。

consciously

美 [kɑn??sli]

adv. 自覺地；有意識地

adj. conscious [k?n??s]

自覺的；神志清醒的；能感覺和思考的；有意的，故意的，蓄意的，存心的

造句示例：If so, turn it off and decide to live consciously. 如果是這樣子，關掉它，決定有意識的生活。

演講稿

Meg?Jay: Why 30 is not the new 20

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

But I didnt 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. "Thirtys 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.

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

I said, "Sure, shes dating down, shes sleeping with a knucklehead, but its not like shes going to marry the guy."

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

Thats 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 didnt make Alexs 20s a developmental downtime. That made Alexs 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.

There are 50 million twentysomethings in the United States right now. Were talking about 15 percent of the population, or 100 percent if you consider that no ones getting through adulthood without going through their 20s first.

Raise your hand if youre in your 20s. I really want to see some twentysomethings here. Oh, yay! Yalls awesome. If you work with twentysomethings, you love a twentysomething, youre losing sleep over twentysomethings, I want to see — Okay. Awesome, twentysomethings really matter.

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.

This is not my opinion. These are the facts. We know that 80 percent of lifes 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, dont 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 youre 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.

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. Its 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 theres such a thing as adult development, and our 20s are that critical period of adult development.

But this isnt 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." Its true. As a culture, we have trivialized what is actually the defining decade of adulthood.

Leonard Bernstein said that to achieve great things, you need a plan and not quite enough time. Isnt 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.

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 boyfriends no good for me, but this relationship doesnt count. Im just killing time." Or they say, "Everybody says as long as I get started on a career by the time Im 30, Ill be fine."

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."

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 didnt 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. 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.

The post-millennial midlife crisis isnt buying a red sports car. Its realizing you cant have that career you now want. Its realizing you cant have that child you now want, or you cant give your child a sibling. Too many thirtysomethings and fortysomethings look at themselves, and at me, sitting across the room, and say about their 20s, "What was I doing? What was I thinking?"

I want to change what twentysomethings are doing and thinking.

Heres a story about how that can go. Its a story about a woman named Emma. At 25, Emma came to my office because she was, in her words, having an identity crisis. She said she thought she might like to work in art or entertainment, but she hadnt decided yet, so shed spent the last few years waiting tables instead. Because it was cheaper, she lived with a boyfriend who displayed his temper more than his ambition. And as hard as her 20s were, her early life had been even harder. She often cried in our sessions, but then would collect herself by saying, "You cant pick your family, but you can pick your friends."

Well one day, Emma comes in and she hangs her head in her lap, and she sobbed for most of the hour. Shed just bought a new address book, and shed spent the morning filling in her many contacts, but then shed been left staring at that empty blank that comes after the words "In case of emergency, please call ... ." She was nearly hysterical when she looked at me and said, "Whos going to be there for me if I get in a car wreck? Whos going to take care of me if I have cancer?"

Now in that moment, it took everything I had not to say, "I will." But what Emma needed wasnt some therapist who really, really cared. Emma needed a better life, and I knew this was her chance. I had learned too much since I first worked with Alex to just sit there while Emmas defining decade went parading by.

So over the next weeks and months, I told Emma three things that every twentysomething, male or female, deserves to hear.

First, I told Emma to forget about having an identity crisis and get some identity capital. By get identity capital, I mean do something that adds value to who you are. Do something thats an investment in who you might want to be next. I didnt know the future of Emmas career, and no one knows the future of work, but I do know this: Identity capital begets identity capital. So now is the time for that cross-country job, that internship, that startup you want to try. Im not discounting twentysomething exploration here, but I am discounting exploration thats not supposed to count, which, by the way, is not exploration. Thats procrastination. I told Emma to explore work and make it count.

Second, I told Emma that the urban tribe is overrated. Best friends are great for giving rides to the airport, but twentysomethings who huddle together with like-minded peers limit who they know, what they know, how they think, how they speak, and where they work. That new piece of capital, that new person to date almost always comes from outside the inner circle.New things come from what are called our weak ties, our friends of friends of friends. So yes, half of twentysomethings are un- or under-employed.But half arent, and weak ties are how you get yourself into that group. Half of new jobs are never posted, so reaching out to your neighbors boss is how you get that un-posted job. Its not cheating. Its the science of how information spreads.

Last but not least, Emma believed that you cant pick your family, but you can pick your friends. Now this was true for her growing up, but as a twentysomething, soon Emma would pick her family when she partnered with someone and created a family of her own. I told Emma the time to start picking your family is now. Now you may be thinking that 30 is actually a better time to settle down than 20, or even 25, and I agree with you. But grabbing whoever youre living with or sleeping with when everyone on Facebook starts walking down the aisle is not progress.The best time to work on your marriage is before you have one, and that means being as intentional with love as you are with work. Picking your family is about consciously choosing who and what you want rather than just making it work or killing time with whoever happens to be choosing you.

So what happened to Emma? Well, we went through that address book, and she found an old roommates cousin who worked at an art museum in another state. That weak tie helped her get a job there. That job offer gave her the reason to leave that live-in boyfriend. Now, five years later, shes a special events planner for museums. Shes married to a man she mindfully chose. She loves her new career, she loves her new family, and she sent me a card that said, "Now the emergency contact blanks dont seem big enough."

Now Emmas story made that sound easy, but thats what I love about working with twentysomethings. They are so easy to help. Twentysomethings are like airplanes just leaving LAX, bound for somewhere west. Right after takeoff, a slight change in course is the difference between landing in Alaska or Fiji. Likewise, at 21 or 25 or even 29, one good conversation, one good break, one good TED Talk, can have an enormous effect across years and even generations to come.

So heres an idea worth spreading to every twentysomething you know. Its as simple as what I learned to say to Alex. Its what I now have the privilege of saying to twentysomethings like Emma every single day: Thirty is not the new 20, so claim your adulthood, get some identity capital, use your weak ties, pick your family. Dont be defined by what you didnt know or didnt do. Youre deciding your life right now. Thank you. (Applause)

在這個點擊過百萬的TED演講中，Meg Jay說不能因為婚姻、工作和子女是以後的事情，現在就可以無規劃的生活。二十世代是個關鍵期，我們所做之事－及未做之事－對未來人生、甚至後代都將產生巨大影響。

別被你不知道的或者沒做過的事情限制，生活的決定權在你。青春，把握好，才會有意義。幹了這碗雞湯！

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