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But “How old do you feel?” is an altogether different question from “How old are you in your head?” [qh]
不过，“你觉得自己多大了?”与“在你心里你多大了?”这两个问题截然不同。[qh]
The most inspired paper I read about subjective age, from 2006, asked this of its 1,470 participants—in a Danish population (Denmark being the kind of place where studies like these would happen)—and what the two authors discovered is that adults over 40 perceive themselves to be, on average, about 20 percent younger than their actual age. [qh]
我读到了2006年一篇关于主观年龄最有启发性的论文。论文中向1470名参与者丹麦人(丹麦是进行这类研究的地方)提出了这个问题。两位作者发现，四十岁以上的成年人认为自己比实际年龄平均年轻20%左右。[qh]
“We ran this thing, and the data were gorgeous,” says David C. Rubin (75 in real life, 60 in his head), one of the paper’s authors and a psychology and neuroscience professor at Duke University.[qh]
该论文的作者之一、杜克大学心理学和神经学教授戴维·鲁宾说: “我们进行了这项调查，数据非常棒。”鲁宾在现实生活中75岁，在他心里他只有60岁。[qh]
“It was just all these beautiful, smooth curves.”[qh]
“这些曲线优美流畅。”[qh]
Why we’re possessed of this urge to subtract is another matter. [qh]
为什么我们有减龄的欲望则是另一回事。[qh]
Rubin and his co-author, Dorthe Berntsen, didn’t make it the focus of this particular paper, and the researchers who do often propose a crude, predictable answer—namely, that lots of people consider aging a catastrophe, which, while true, seems to tell only a fraction of the story. [qh]
鲁宾和他的合著者多特·伯恩特森并没有将其作为这篇论文的重点，而那些经常给出一个粗略的、可预测的答案的研究人员认为原因是，许多人认为衰老是一场灾难，尽管这是事实，但似乎并不是故事的全貌。[qh]
You could just as well make a different case: that viewing yourself as younger is a form of optimism, rather than denialism. [qh]
你也可以换个说法: 认为自己年轻是一种乐观主义，而不是否认主义。[qh]
It says that you envision many generative years ahead of you, that you will not be written off, that your future is not one long, dreary corridor of locked doors.[qh]
也就是说，你预想着在未来的许多年，你成果显著，不会被淘汰，你的未来不是一条长长的、沉闷的走廊，四周满是上锁的门。[qh]
I think of my own numbers, for instance—which, though a slight departure from the Rubin-Berntsen rule, are still within a reasonable range (or so Rubin assures me). [qh]
例如，我想到了我自己的年龄——尽管与鲁宾-伯恩森法则略有偏离，但仍在合理范围内(鲁宾向我保证)。[qh]
I’m 53 in real life but suspended at 36 in my head, and if I stop my brain from doing its usual Tilt-A-Whirl for long enough, I land on the same explanation: At 36, I knew the broad contours of my life, but hadn’t yet filled them in.[qh]
在现实生活中，我已经53岁了，但在我心里，我仍停留在36岁，如果我让我的大脑停止正常运转足够久，我就会得出同样的解释: 36岁时，我知道我生活的大致轮廓，但还没有把它们填满。[qh]
I was professionally established, but still brimmed with potential. [qh]
我在专业内很知名，但仍然充满潜力。[qh]
I was paired off with my husband, but not yet lost in the marshes of a long marriage (and, okay, not yet a tiresome fishwife). [qh]
我和丈夫成双成对，还没有迷失在长期婚姻的沼泽中(好吧，还没有成为一个令人讨厌的骂街泼妇）。[qh]
I was soon to be pregnant, but not yet a mother fretting about eating habits, screen habits, study habits, the brutal folkways of adolescents, the porn merchants of the internet.[qh]
我很快就怀孕了，还没有成为一个为饮食习惯、看视频习惯、学习习惯、青少年野蛮风气、互联网色情卖家而烦恼的母亲。[qh]
I was not yet on the gray turnpike of middle age, in other words.[qh]
换言之，我还没有步入中年的灰色收费公路。[qh]
