Psychologist Dr. Meg Jay tells how to thrive during the decade that contains “80 per cent of life’s most defining moments”
Gates Annai (they/she) // Features Editor
Chelle Lussi (Any) // Crew Illustrator
“Research suggests that our twenties are one of the loneliest times of life,” writes Dr. Meg Jay. At this point in her book, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now, I breathed an unexpected sigh of relief. If you’re in your twenties, you likely relate to the clients that Jay works with. They describe thinking their twenties were going to be the best years of their life — full of fun, independence, partying, and creating lifelong friendships — and coming up disappointed when things didn’t turn out like they had been promised. What none of us were expecting was the endless road of uncertainty and crushing loneliness that comes with young adulthood in a world on our own.
That is where The Defining Decade comes in, serving as a guidebook through what Jay says are the three most important parts of life: Work, Love and The Brain and the Body. To Jay, it is the shying away from life due to our uncertainty that creates this anxiety and loneliness, and the defense is to invest in our own lives, “Feeling better, then, doesn’t come from avoiding adulthood. It comes from investing in adulthood.”
The Work section comes first in the book, detailing how twenty-somethings can invest more into their future career by developing identity capital now. Jay defines identity capital as “our stock of personal assets. It is how we add value to who we are, and it is what we have to show for how we have spent our time.” She describes many twenty-somethings struggling with gaining identity capital through either being unemployed, or underemployed — which is to be stuck in a job that doesn’t add much to our resume, skills, or worse, our identity.
Love is another difficult part of twenty-something life. How do you begin to choose a life partner? And when? Jay has the answers to these questions across six chapters–not only in dating, but choosing the person who will one day become your family (and extended family). She says the best time to work on your future marriage is before you get married.
While planning that far ahead can seem daunting, Jay says that those of us who only start seriously dating at 30 often feel left behind by those that are moving onto marriage and parenthood. “Marriage goes from being something we’ll worry about at thirty to being something we want at thirty. When, then, is the time to really think about partnership? Spoiler alert: your twenties,” she writes.
The Brain and the Body section ends off the book by explaining the literal brain development that occurs over the course of the twenties, which is… a lot. Many of us already know that our brains don’t fully develop until around twenty-five, but Jay also writes that the entire decade is the best time to become the person you want to be. Your twenties are the years in which your brain is the most plastic after the initial language-learning phase when we’re babies, and the most plastic it will ever be again. By thirty, that plasticity has already begun to decrease.
Overall, The Defining Decade is inspiring, relieving, and at times, healthily pressuring. In the sometimes dark, sometimes scary, sometimes impossible loneliness of twenty-something life, Jay says, “The future isn’t written in the stars… so claim your adulthood. Be intentional… Don’t be defined by what you didn’t know or didn’t do. You are deciding your life right now.”
Pick up a copy for yourself, or a few friends, this holiday season on Amazon from $25.80 used, or Indigo for $25.99.