The Defining Decade | Why Your Twenties Matter and How to Make the Most of Them Now

| Let’s be honest the people who need to read this book the most are the ones who are the least likely to. Maybe you fall into that camp, so I’ll do my best to summarize it here.

“The Defining Decade” is not a book about fictional people. It is a book about real people. We get to hear from real twenty and thirty year olds about their lifes, their fears, their ambitions, the misinformation they were fed, and the mistakes they made along the way. Meg Jay is the therapist these people went to and is the one who has opened the window into these people’s lifes, as well as the lifes of many twenty somethings that we may personally know, for us the reading audience. She may have changed their names, but she didn’t change their stories such as this one told by “Billy”, a man in his mid thirties who started a family later in life, who had a health scare:

“…And the funny—no, sad—thing was my life didn’t flash before my eyes. Not at all. I’m thirty-eight years old and there were, like, two things I had in my mind—the way my little son’s hand feels when I hold it and how I didn’t want to leave my wife behind to do it all on her own. What seemed plain to me was that I wasn’t scared of losing my past. I was scared of losing my future. I felt like almost nothing in my life mattered up until just a few years ago. I realized that all the good stuff is still to come. I was so sick and panicked that I might never see my son ride a bike, play soccer, graduate from school, get married have his own kids. And my career was just getting good.
Nothing is {in regards to his health} wrong, thank God. But this has made me face some things. I saw my regular doctor a couple of days after the MRI, and I told her she needed to keep me going for a good twenty years at least…”

This book is filled with more than just stories, however. Mrs. Jay shares with us, the readers, the advice she offered her clients in a tone that may resonate with some, but as for me I like it best when she list the facts and statistics such as this one about women’s fertility at different stages in their lifes which is relevant to anyone, not just women, who wants to have a family of their own which Mrs. Jay also points out is most people.

“…Compared to their twenty something selves, women are about half as fertile at thirty, about one-quarter as fertile at thirty-five, and about one-eighth as fertile at forty. That’s one reason why if we look at the actual base rates for babies born in the United States in 2007, about one million babies were born to mothers aged twenty to twenty-four, another million were born to mothers aged twenty-five to twenty-nine, just under one million were born to mothers aged thirty to thirty-four, about 500,000 babies were born to mothers aged thirty-five to thirty-nine, only 100,000 were born to mothers aged forty to forty-four, and fewer than 10,000 were born to women forty-five and over.”

Mrs. Jay goes on to write about many other subjects. Such as work, how it impacts our lifes, how long it takes for us to develop mastery and thus competence in our jobs, as well as how it’s the acquaintances that we barely know that have the largest impact on our careers not our closest friends or relatives. Or how cohabitation is not a good test of a couple’s compatibility for marriage especially when it just sort of happens. The list of subjects and stories goes on. Although not all of the information in this book was new to me, I still liked being able to see it all in one place and to hear other folks my age express similar concerns. Honestly, after reading this book I felt a slight kick in the bum to keep things moving in my life and to not become complacent. A feeling that I think many other twenty to thirty something year olds would feel. I’ll send you, my reader, off with the last words Meg Jay wrote in her book:

“…The future isn’t written in the stars. There are no guarantees. Do claim your adulthood. Be intentional. Get to work. Pick your family. Do the math. Make your own certainty. Don’t be defined by what you didn’t know or didn’t do.
You are deciding your life right now.”

— Author: TBryantS