Meg Jay: Why 30 is not the new 20 Meg Jay: Warum 30 nicht das neue 20 ist Meg Jay : Pourquoi 30 ans n'est pas le nouveau 20 ans Meg Jay: Dlaczego 30 to nie nowe 20 Meg Jay: Porque é que 30 não são os novos 20 梅格-杰伊为什么 30 岁不是新的 20 岁

When I was in my 20s, I saw my very first psychotherapy client. Quando eu tinha 20 anos, vi meu primeiro cliente em psicoterapia.

I was a Ph.D. student in clinical psychology at Berkeley. バークレー校で臨床心理学を専攻する学生。 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. 今、アレックスはジーンズと大きなだぶだぶのトップスを着て最初のセッションに臨みました。彼女は私のオフィスのソファに腰を下ろし、ぺたんこ靴を蹴って、男の問題について話すために来たと私に言いました。 Agora, Alex entrou em sua primeira sessão vestindo jeans e uma blusa grande e desleixada, e ela caiu no sofá do meu escritório, chutou seus apartamentos e me disse que estava lá para conversar sobre problemas masculinos. Now when I heard this, I was so relieved. Agora, quando ouvi isso, fiquei tão aliviada. My classmate got an arsonist for her first client. Minha colega de classe conseguiu um incendiário para seu primeiro cliente. (Laughter) And I got a twentysomething who wanted to talk about boys. This I thought I could handle. Eu pensei que poderia lidar com isso.

But I didn't handle it. Mas eu não lidei com isso. 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. Com as histórias engraçadas que Alex traria para a sessão, foi fácil para mim apenas acenar com a cabeça enquanto chutávamos a lata pela estrada. "Thirty's the new 20," Alex would say, and as far as I could tell, she was right. "Trinta e vinte novos", Alex dizia, e até onde eu sabia, ela estava certa. Work happened later, marriage happened later, kids happened later, even death happened later. 仕事は後回し、結婚も後回し、子供も後回し、死さえも後回し。 O trabalho aconteceu depois, o casamento aconteceu depois, os filhos aconteceram depois, até a morte aconteceu depois. Twentysomethings like Alex and I had nothing but time. Vinte anos como Alex e eu não tínhamos nada além de tempo.

But before long, my supervisor pushed me to push Alex about her love life. しかし、いつの間にか上司から、アレックスの恋愛についてプッシュされるようになりました。 Mas em pouco tempo, meu supervisor me pressionou a empurrar Alex sobre sua vida amorosa. I pushed back. と背中を押しました。 Eu empurrei de volta.

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. " 私は、"確かに、彼女は下手に付き合って、ナックルと寝ているけど、その男と結婚するわけでもないでしょう。" Eu disse: "Claro, ela está namorando, está dormindo com um nó na cabeça, mas não é como se ela fosse se casar com o cara". And then my supervisor said, "Not yet, but she might marry the next one. すると、上司が「まだだけど、次の人と結婚するかもしれないよ」と。 E então meu supervisor disse: "Ainda não, mas ela pode se casar com o próximo. Besides, the best time to work on Alex's marriage is before she has one. " それに、アレックスの結婚に取り組むには、結婚する前が一番いいんだ。" Além disso, a melhor hora para trabalhar no casamento de Alex é antes que ela tenha um. " That's what psychologists call an "Aha!" それが心理学者の言う "Aha!"です。 Isso é o que os psicólogos chamam de "Aha!" moment. の瞬間です。 momento. That was the moment I realized, 30 is not the new 20. 30歳は新しい20歳ではないんだ、と実感した瞬間でした。 Yes, people settle down later than they used to, but that didn't make Alex's 20s a developmental downtime. しかし、だからといって、アレックスの20代が発展的なダウンタイムになるわけではありません。 Sim, as pessoas se acalmam mais tarde do que costumavam, mas isso não fez dos anos 20 de Alex um tempo de inatividade no desenvolvimento. That made Alex's 20s a developmental sweet spot, and we were sitting there blowing it. そのため、アレックスの20代は開発上のスイートスポットであり、我々はそこに座って吹いていたのです。 Isso fez dos 20 anos de Alex um ponto ideal de desenvolvimento, e estávamos sentados lá estragando tudo. 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. アレックスと彼女の恋愛だけでなく、20代の若者たちのキャリアや家族、未来にも影響を与えるのです。

There are 50 million twentysomethings in the United States right now. 今、アメリカには5千万人の20代がいます。 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. 人口の15％、20代を経ずに大人になる人はいないと考えれば100％ということになりますね。 Raise your hand if you're in your 20s. 20代の方、手を挙げてください。 I really want to see some twentysomethings here. ここはぜひ20代に見てもらいたい。 Oh, yay! Y'all's awesome. Y'allはすごいね。 If you work with twentysomethings, you love a twentysomething, you're losing sleep over twentysomethings, I want to see — Okay. もしあなたが20代の若者と仕事をしているなら、20代の若者を愛しているなら、20代の若者のことで眠れなくなっているなら、私は見たいんです。 Awesome, twentysomethings really matter. すごい！20代は本当に大事なんですね。

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. 20代の主張が、仕事、恋愛、幸せ、そして世界にとって、最もシンプルでありながら、最も大きな変化をもたらすものであることを、5千万人の20代が知っているはずだと信じているからです。

This is not my opinion. これは私の意見ではありません。 These are the facts. We know that 80 percent of life's most defining moments take place by age 35. 人生の最も重要な瞬間の80％は、35歳までに起こることがわかっています。 That means that eight out of 10 of the decisions and experiences and "Aha!" つまり、10人中8人が決断や経験、そして "Aha!"をしているということです。 moments that make your life what it is will have happened by your mid-30s. 30代半ばには、自分の人生を左右するような出来事が起きているはずです。 People who are over 40, don't panic. 40歳以上の人、慌てないでください。 This crowd is going to be fine, I think. この人数なら大丈夫だろう。 We know that the first 10 years of a career has an exponential impact on how much money you're going to earn. キャリアの最初の10年間が、収入の多寡に指数関数的な影響を与えることが分かっています。 We know that more than half of Americans are married or are living with or dating their future partner by 30. アメリカ人の半数以上が30歳までに結婚、または将来のパートナーと同棲、交際していることが分かっています。 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. 脳は20代で最後の成長期を迎え、大人になるために自己を再構築することが分かっています。 Sabemos que o cérebro encerra seu segundo e último surto de crescimento nos seus 20 anos à medida que se religa para a vida adulta, o que significa que, seja o que for que você queira mudar sobre si mesmo, agora é a hora de mudá-lo. 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. また、女性の生殖能力は28歳がピークで、35歳を過ぎると厄介なことになることがわかっています。 So your 20s are the time to educate yourself about your body and your options. だから、20代は自分の体や選択肢について教育する時期なんです。

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. 普段の何気ない日常が、これからの自分に多大な影響を与える時期です。 É um momento em que sua vida cotidiana comum tem um impacto desordenado em quem você se tornará. 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. しかし、これは20代が聞いているのではありません。 Newspapers talk about the changing timetable of adulthood. Researchers call the 20s an extended adolescence. 研究者たちは、20代を「延長された青春」と呼んでいます。 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. 文化として、私たちは大人になるための決定的な10年間を矮小化してしまっています。

Leonard Bernstein said that to achieve great things, you need a plan and not quite enough time. レナード・バーンスタインは、「偉大なことを成し遂げるには、計画と十分でない時間が必要だ」と言いました。 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.

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. " 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 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. 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. Quando muita gente chega aos seus 30 anos, há uma enorme pressão de trinta e poucos anos para iniciar uma carreira, escolher uma cidade, formar parceria e ter dois ou três filhos em um período muito mais curto. 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. Muitas dessas coisas são incompatíveis e, como a pesquisa está apenas começando a mostrar, simplesmente mais difícil e estressante de fazer tudo ao mesmo tempo nos nossos 30 anos.

The post-millennial midlife crisis isn't buying a red sports car. It's realizing you can't have that career you now want. It's realizing you can't have that child you now want, or you can't 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.

Here's a story about how that can go. It's 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 hadn't decided yet, so she'd 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. Por ser mais barato, ela morava com um namorado que exibia mais temperamento do que ambição. 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 can't 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. She'd just bought a new address book, and she'd spent the morning filling in her many contacts, but then she'd 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, "Who's going to be there for me if I get in a car wreck? Who's 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 wasn't 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 Emma's 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 that's an investment in who you might want to be next. I didn't know the future of Emma's 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. I'm not discounting twentysomething exploration here, but I am discounting exploration that's not supposed to count, which, by the way, is not exploration. That's procrastination. Isso é procrastinação. I told Emma to explore work and make it count. Eu disse a Emma para explorar o trabalho e fazer valer a pena.

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. Os melhores amigos são ótimos para dar carona até o aeroporto, mas vinte e poucos anos que se amontoam com colegas com a mesma opinião limitam quem eles sabem, o que sabem, como pensam, como falam e onde trabalham. 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. Coisas novas vêm do que é chamado de nossos laços fracos, nossos amigos de amigos de amigos. So yes, half of twentysomethings are un- or under-employed. Então, sim, metade dos vinte e poucos anos está desempregada ou subempregada. But half aren't, and weak ties are how you get yourself into that group. Mas metade não é, e laços fracos são como você entra nesse grupo. Half of new jobs are never posted, so reaching out to your neighbor's boss is how you get that un-posted job. It's not cheating. Não é trapaça. It's the science of how information spreads. Last but not least, Emma believed that you can't 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 you're living with or sleeping with when everyone on Facebook starts walking down the aisle is not progress. Mas agarrar a pessoa com quem você está morando ou dormindo quando todos no Facebook começam a andar pelo corredor não é progresso. 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 roommate's 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. Essa oferta de emprego deu a ela o motivo de deixar aquele namorado que morava. Now, five years later, she's a special events planner for museums. She's 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 don't seem big enough. " Ela ama sua nova carreira, sua nova família e me enviou um cartão que dizia: "Agora os espaços em branco para contatos de emergência não parecem grandes o suficiente". Now Emma's story made that sound easy, but that's what I love about working with twentysomethings. Agora, a história de Emma fez isso parecer fácil, mas é isso que eu amo em trabalhar com vinte e poucos anos. They are so easy to help. Eles são tão fáceis de ajudar. Twentysomethings are like airplanes just leaving LAX, bound for somewhere west. Vinte e poucos anos são como aviões saindo de LAX, com destino a algum lugar a oeste. Right after takeoff, a slight change in course is the difference between landing in Alaska or Fiji. Logo após a decolagem, uma pequena mudança de rumo é a diferença entre pousar no Alasca ou 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. Da mesma forma, aos 21, 25 ou 29 anos, uma boa conversa, uma boa pausa, uma boa conversa TED, podem ter um efeito enorme ao longo dos anos e até das gerações vindouras.

So here's an idea worth spreading to every twentysomething you know. It's as simple as what I learned to say to Alex. It's 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. É o que agora tenho o privilégio de dizer a vinte e poucos anos como Emma todos os dias: trinta não é o novo ano 20, então reivindique sua idade adulta, obtenha algum capital de identidade, use seus laços fracos, escolha sua família. Don't be defined by what you didn't know or didn't do. Não seja definido pelo que você não sabia ou não fez. You're deciding your life right now. Thank you. (Applause)