"What age is most fun?" asks marketing¹ expert Faith Popcorn². "How about being stuck at six!" With these words futurist Popcorn highlights a trend she believes will dominate the midlife years of this generation. She calls it "Down Aging... a return to a simpler time when we all giggled³ and played." Popcorn is right. Like Peter Pan, today's midlifers want to stay young forever. We miss the child we once were.

“哪个年纪最有意思？”市场营销专家菲斯·珀普康恩问道。“一直停留在六岁怎么样？” 珀普康恩是一位未来主义者，她通过上面这一番话引出了一个新的潮流，她认为这个潮流将会主导我们这代人的中年生涯。她管这个潮流叫做down aging（暂译为“找回童真”），指回到我们曾经欢笑和玩耍的那个单纯年代。珀普康恩是对的。如今的中年人们都像彼得潘一样想要永远保持年轻。我们都很怀念自己从前的样子。

 

You can be both an adult and a child. One can be childlike without becoming childish. And if your inner child is comatose⁴ from disuse, midlife is a good time to revive him or her.

你可以有成人和儿童双重身份。你可以像孩子那样生活，同时又不让自己显得很幼稚。如果你内心深处的那个天真孩童因为太久无人搭理而处于昏睡状态，中年时光是将他们唤醒的一个好时候。

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