The defining decade, or "the slap"

I am 20 years old. My much older mentor reads this book about being 20 in one night, and writes me, "Fascinating. There are pages and pages and pages where I recognize your questions and answers." It was required reading.

And I got a slap. But probably not as hard as others.

Meg Jay is an American psychologist who has dealt with many young people in their twenties. She tells us what she has learned from her many encounters.

Basically, it would be wrong to think that your twenties don't count just because you live longer, have children later, and generally get married later. Your thirties are not the new twenties, and you shouldn't think of your twenties as a decade where you don't have to do anything, just wait for your thirties to arrive. Because in fact, it's all about the twenties.

Meg Jay explains that we build ourselves from the outside and not from the inside, that is to say that it is by doing things that we discover who we are, and not by introspection. It is by working, for example, that we discover what we want to do later. So you have to work, and if you have a goal, you have to work in the field you want to be in.

The same goes for relationships. Your twenties are not the time to have superficial or empty relationships, because if your goal is to be with someone for the long term, to eventually have children and to eventually get married, you have to start looking right away. Otherwise, you're basically wasting precious years that you might regret later.

In short: get closer to what you want right now. And that things don't just magically fall into your lap: you have to work for them. We have the power to have the life we want.

Let's just say it made me think hard. And it reassured me that I wasn't completely lost.

For more details, please read this fascinating and touching book which gives arguments that cannot be heard anywhere else.