(单词翻译:单击)
“I’m 35,” wrote my friend Richard Primus, 53 in real life and a constitutional-law professor at the University of Michigan Law School.
“我35岁了，”我的朋友理查德·普里默斯写道，但他的实际年龄是53岁，他是密歇根大学法学院的宪法学教授。
“I think it’s because that’s the age I was when my major life questions/statuses reached the resolutions/conditions in which they’ve since remained.”
“我想这是因为在我那个年纪，我重大的人生问题都制定了计划，主要的生活状态也达到了条件，自那以后，它们就没有变过。”
So: kind of like my answer, but more optimistically rendered.
所以: 有点像我的答案，但提供的答案更乐观。
He continued: “Medieval Christian theologians asked the intriguing question ‘How old are people in heaven?’ The dominant answer: 33.
他接着说: “中世纪的基督教神学家问了一个有趣的问题: ‘天堂里的人有多大年纪? 多数人的回答是: 33岁。
Partly because age of Jesus at crucifixion. But I think partly because it feels like a kind of peak for the combined vigor-maturity index.”
部分原因是，33岁是耶稣被钉在十字架上的年龄。但我认为部分原因是，33岁感觉像是精力与成熟综合指数的巅峰。”
The combined vigor--maturity index: Yes!
精力与成熟综合指数:是的!
Richard was replying to me on Twitter, where I’d tossed out my query to the crowd: “How old are you in your head?”
理查德是在推特上回复的我，因为我在推特上向人们抛出了我的问题: “在你心里你有多大年纪?”
(Turns out I’m not the only one with this impulse; Sari Botton, the founder of Oldster Magazine, regularly publishes questionnaires she has issued to novelists, artists, and activists of a certain age, and this is the second question.)
(结果证明，我不是唯一一个有这种减龄冲动的人;《Oldster》杂志的创始人莎莉·波顿定期向一定年龄的小说家、艺术家和活动家发放调查问卷，这也是第二个问题。)
Ian Leslie, the author of Conflicted and two other social--science books (32 in his head, 51 in “boring old reality”), took a similar view to mine and Richard’s, but added an astute and humbling observation: Internally viewing yourself as substantially younger than you are can make for some serious social weirdness.
伊恩·莱斯利是《Conflicted》和另外两本社会学书籍的作者(他内心认为自己是32岁，但实际上是51岁)，他的观点与我和理查德的相似，但他补充了一条敏锐而令人羞愧的评论: 在内心认为自己比实际年龄年轻得多，可能会导致一些严重的社交怪异行为。
“30 year olds should be aware that for better or for worse, the 50 year old they’re talking to thinks they’re roughly the same age!” he wrote.
“30岁的人应该意识到，不论好与坏，与他们交谈的50岁的人认为他们与30岁的人年龄大致相同!” 他写道。
“Was at a party over the summer where average was about 28 and I had to make a conscious effort to remember I wasn’t the same—they can tell of course, so it’s asymmetrical.”
“在一个平均年龄为28岁左右的夏日派对上，我不得不有意记住我和他们不一样——他们当然能分辨出来，所以这是不对等的。”
Yes. They can tell.
是的。他们能分辨出来。
I’ve had this unsettling experience, seeing little difference between the 30-something before me and my 50-something self, when suddenly the 30-something will make a comment that betrays just how aware she is of the age gap between us, that this gap seems enormous, that in her eyes I may as well be Dame Judi Dench.
我曾有过这样令人不安的经历，我认为我面前30多岁的人和50多岁的自己之间几乎没什么不同，突然间，30多岁的人会发表评论，透露出她多么清楚我们之间的年龄差距，这个差距似乎很大，在她眼里我就像朱迪·丹奇夫人一样老。
Although many hewed close to the Rubin-Berntsen rule, the replies I got on Twitter were not always about potential.
尽管许多人都几乎与鲁宾-伯恩特森法则相符，但我在推特上得到的回复并不总是关于潜力的。
Many carried with them a whiff of unexpected poignancy.
许多人都带着一些意想不到的辛酸。
Trauma sometimes played a role: One person was stuck at 32, unable to see themselves as any older than a sibling who’d died; another was stuck for a long time at age 12, the year her father joined a cult.
创伤有时也会起作用: 一个人停留在32岁的年纪，无法觉得自己比离世的兄弟姐妹年长; 另一个人停留在12岁很长时间，因为那年她的父亲加入了一个邪教。
(Rubin has written about this phenomenon too—the centrality of certain events to our memories, especially calamitous ones. Sometimes we freeze at the age of our traumas.)
(鲁宾也写过这种现象——某些事件在我们记忆中占中心地位，尤其是灾难性事件。有时，我们冻结在了经历创伤的年纪。)
