20岁中令人害怕的一个方面是，我们都深信，一旦作出选择，便无可挽回。无论我们选择读研或参加工作，结婚或单身，搬入郊区或放弃出国旅行，放弃孩子或放弃事业，我们都会从骨子里害怕自己的一生就此定型了。而这种恐惧大都是没有道理的。变化不仅是可能的，而且对我们最初的选择作些更改甚至有可能是不可避免的。但既然我们在20几岁时对于作出人生重大选择都没有经验，我们便无法想象到将来可能会有更好的融合机遇出现在生活中，而那时我们的内心将变得成熟起来。
Two impulses, as always, are at work during this period. 在这一阶段往往有两股冲动的力量在发挥作用。
One is to build a firm, safe structure for the future by making strong commitments, to be set. Yet people who slip into a ready-made form without much self-examination are likely to find themselves following a locked-in pattern.
一种冲动是通过作出郑重承诺，为将来选择一种稳定可靠的生活方式，并不再改变。然而许多人未经充分自省便进入某种现成的生活模式，却往往可能发现自己正过着一种固定不变的生活。
The other urge is to explore and experiment, keeping any structure tentative and therefore easily reversible. Taken to the extreme by people who skip through their twenties from one trial job and one limited personal encounter to another, this becomes the transient pattern.
另一种冲动是去探索和试验，使每种生活方式处于尝试性状态，因此很容易改变。有些人将这一冲动引向极端，他们在整个20来岁阶段不停地更换工作，不停地结识新交。这便成为一种总在改变的生活方式。
The balance struck between these two impulses makes for differences in the way people pass through this period of provisional adulthood and largely determines the way we feel about ourselves at the end of it. 如何平衡这两种冲动，便造成了人们在经历成年过渡期方面的差异，并很大程度上决定了我们在这个阶段结束时有怎样的自我感觉。
The Power of Illusions幻想的力量
However galvanizing our vision in the early twenties, it is far from being complete. Even while we are delighted to display our shiny new capacities, secret fears persist that we are not going to get away with it. Somebody is going to discover the imposter.
无论我们在20岁早期如何激发着幻想，都远非十分完满。即使当我们高兴地施展着那些辉煌的新才能的时候，内心也始终害怕我们不会侥幸成功。总有人会发现我们其实是装模作样的骗子。
To have seen the vivacious, 24-year-old junior executive at her work in a crack San Francisco public relations firm, one would probably not have guessed the trepidations underneath, “I realized that I had not grown up. I was amazed at how well I functioned at work. When clients would deal with me as an equal, I’d think, ’I got away with it,’ but the feeling wasn’t one of joy. It was terror that eventually they would find out I was just a child. Simply not equipped. The other half of the time, I would have tremendous confidence and arrogance about who I was — a
hotshot out there accomplishing all sorts of things and everybody thinking I was so terrific. I was like two people.”
你见过这位活泼的年仅24岁的初级女主管在旧金山一家第一流的公共关系公司上班的样子以后，你恐怕猜想不到她外表下内心的惶恐：“我知道自己还没有长大。我自己都惊讶在工作上我能表现得这么好。当客户平等地与我打交道时，我会想，‘我侥幸成功了’，但这种感觉并非喜悦，而是害怕他们最后会发现我只不过是个孩子而已。完全不具备什么能力。而另一半的时间里，我又对自己感到无比地自信和自傲，我——一个了不起的人，在工作中做到完成了各种各样的工作，每个人都认为我棒极了。我就像是两个不同的人似的。”
Many of us are not consciously aware of such fears. With enough surface bravado to fool the people we meet, we fool ourselves as well. But the memory of formlessness is never far beneath. So we hasten to try on life’s uniforms and possible partners, in search of the perfect fit. 我们中的许多人尚未有意识地认识到这种恐惧。当我们表面的虚张声势足以愚弄我们所认识的人时，我们也在愚弄着自己。但是对自己尚未成型的记忆仍然
清晰可寻。所以我们在追寻着最完美最合适自己的一切的过程中，匆忙地尝试着各种生活方式和可能的伴侣。
“Perfect” is that person we imbue with the capacity to enliven and support our vision or the person we believe in and want to help. Two centuries ago, a fictional young poet in Germany, torn by his hopeless passion for the “perfect” woman, drank a glass of wine, raised a pistol, and put a bullet through his head. It was a shot heard round the world. The lovelorn dropout who fired it was the hero of Goethe’s novelThe Sorrows of Young Werther, which contributed to the romantic movement that colors our expectations of love to this day. Goethe himself was a poet of 25 when he wrote the story. And like the fictional Werther, he suffered from an infatuation with a married woman, an unreachable woman, whose very mystery invited his fantasies of perfection. Goethe’s hero struck such a chord in young people throughout Europe that a wave of suicides followed the book’s publication.
“完美”的人是那位被我们灌输在头脑中的能激活并支持我们幻想的人，或是那位我们信任并愿意帮助的人。两百年前，一个小说中的年轻德国诗人，他因对一位“完美”女人无望的爱情而备受折磨，喝下一杯酒后，举枪射穿了自己的脑袋。这一枪声响彻世界。打响这一枪的那位失恋的弃世者是歌德小说《少年维特的烦恼》书中的男主人公，这本小说促成的浪漫主义运动直到今天仍影响着我们对爱情的期望。当歌德写这本小说时，他自己正是个25岁的诗人。像小说中的维特一样，他痛苦地痴迷于一位已婚的女人，一个得不到的女人，正是她的神秘激起了他对完美的幻想。歌德的主人公是如此打动着全欧洲青年的心，以至于书出版后，掀起了一股自杀的浪潮。
Today, as then, it’s enlightening to speculate on the degree to which a young man invents his romanticized version of theloved woman. She may be seen as the magical chameleon who will be a mother when he needs it and in the next instant the child requiring his protection, as well as the seductress who proves his potency, the soother of anxieties (who shall have none of her own), the guarantor of his immortality through the conversion of his seed. And to what degree does the young woman invent the man she marries? She often sees in him possibilities that no one else recognizes and pictures herself within his dream as the one person who truly understands. Such illusions are the stuff of which the twenties are made.
今天，如同当时，思考一下年轻男子是如何虚构出他那浪漫化了的热恋女子，也很启人深思。她可以被看作是具有魔力的变色龙般的人物，在他需要母爱时便是一位母亲，下一个瞬间又成为需要他保护的孩子，既是能证明他性能力的风情万种的女子，又是忧虑时能抚慰他的女性（她自己则全无忧虑），而且还能通过为他传宗接代以保存他的不朽。那么年轻女子在多大程度上虚构出她将来的伴侣呢？她经常在他身上看到其他人所未发现的能力，并把自己幻想成他梦中那位唯一了解他的知心人。这些幻想就是20多岁的人所产生出来的。
“Illusions” is usually thought of as a pejorative, something we should get rid of if we suspect we have it. The illusions of the twenties, however, may be essential to infuse our first commitments with excitement and intensity, and to sustain us in those commitments long enough to gain us some experience in living.
“幻想”通常被视为贬义词，是我们一旦察觉自己有此念头就应排除的东西。然而，20岁时的幻想，对于激发和强化我们的最初承诺，对于支撑我们去履行承诺以获取生活经验来说，都可能是十分重要的。
The tasks before us are exciting, conflicting, and sometimes
overwhelming, but of one thing most of us are certain in our twenties. 展现在我们面前的任务是令人兴奋、充满矛盾、有时又是势不可挡的，但有一件事对我们中大多数人来说是很确定的。
Will power will overcome all. 意志力将克服一切。
Money may be scarce, the loans and laundry endless. The evil bait of selling out” may tempt the would-be doctor, writer, social worker. But clearly, or so it seems, we have only to apply our strong minds and sturdy wills to the wheel of life, and sooner or later our destiny will bend under our control.
我们可能囊中羞涩。有考虑不完的金钱问题和处理不完的生活琐事。那些会让我们背弃理想的邪恶诱饵可能引诱着未来的医生、作家和社会工作者。但是很