I Asked Three Strangers If Life Was Worth Living. Here’s What I Got.
This Tuesday morning, I stood waiting for my oat latte at the corner cart, my socks still damp from stepping in a puddle, the faint smell of cat vomit clinging to the cuff of my favorite sweatshirt, after my idiot cat decided 7 a.m. was the perfect time to have an upset stomach. The bus had been 20 minutes late, my boss had already sent three passive-aggressive emails about a report that wasn’t even due for another week, and the question just popped into my head uninvited: Do any of us actually think this whole thing is worth it?
I don’t mean it only in some big, heavy clinical kind of way, not always. I just mean that we all post the nice photos and talk about the big wins at dinner parties, but what do we actually think when we’re waiting for coffee or standing in line at the grocery store or brushing our teeth at night? Do we really look around and think yeah, this is worth all the sore backs and the bad first dates and the overdraft fees and the quiet grief that never fully goes away?
Frank was working the cart that morning, the same guy who’s been there for 12 years. He’s got a faded sailboat tattoo on his wrist, missing the tip of his middle finger from a construction accident back in the 90s, always gives me an extra shot if I look tired. I’d never asked him anything heavier than how his day was going, but for some reason I blurted the question out: Do you think life’s actually worth living?
He paused, wiped a smudge of foam off the counter, leaned against the metal cart and squinted at the traffic going by. “Son,” he said, “I get up at 3:45 a.m. every single day. Last week it snowed, my car wouldn’t start, I walked a mile and a half here in the cold and my left knee ached so bad I could barely bend it to make coffee. Some days I wanna pack it all in and just go stay with my daughter in Florida and never look at an espresso machine again. But last Saturday, my granddaughter came down here with her mom, she picked this dandelion out of the crack right there by the wheel—” he nodded down at the cracked asphalt by the cart’s wheel “—put it in a little tiny mason jar she brought from home, set it right here on the counter. Said it was for me ‘cause I give her free chocolate chip cookies. That dandelion wilted three days ago, but I still haven’t thrown the jar out. Is it worth every damn early morning and achy knee? Yeah. Enough, anyway.”
That answer didn’t come with a big grin or a cheesy inspirational speech. He just handed me my latte and charged me $4.50, same as always.
I got the next answer on the bus ride to work, from a girl maybe 26, sitting next to me, quietly crying into her canvas tote that had a hole in the side. I fished a crumpled tissue out of my bag and passed it to her, she thanked me, we ended up chatting for the 15 minutes we were stuck in stop-and-go traffic. I told her about the question I was asking, she blew her nose and laughed, a messy, unpolished sort of laugh. “I tried to figure out how to end it last weekend,” she said, no lead up, no warning. “Got broken up with three days before that, got laid off from the job I hated anyway. Just felt like everything was stacked against me. Then I got so hungry I ordered the biggest mango sticky rice from that place on 5th, the one with the extra coconut sauce, and I ate the whole thing sitting on my kitchen floor, off a paper plate. And it was so good I started crying harder ‘cause I realized if I was gone I’d never get to eat it again. I don’t think life is this amazing grand adventure or whatever people post about. I just… I have a few things I like enough to keep going. Is that weird? I don’t care if it is.”
Third answer was yesterday, in the park, when I went for a walk to get out of my tiny apartment after work. A golden retriever trotted over and sniffed my sneaker, his owner followed, an older guy in a worn flannel, gray beard, said he was sorry, his name was Carl. I mentioned the question again, just casual, like I was asking about the weather. He stopped walking, stared at the dog who was rolling in clover, scratching his back on the grass. “My wife died two years ago, breast cancer,” he said. “Some days I sit on the couch all day, watch old reruns of Jeopardy that I don’t even care about, and I just don’t see the point. I miss her so bad some days I can’t breathe. But this idiot needs me to get up, take him for walks, buy him peanut butter treats. And there’s that big oak tree over there, by the pond? We used to sit under it every Sunday when we were first married, eat peanut butter sandwiches. It’s bigger now than it was back then, blooms every spring. I don’t know if it’s worth it every day. Some days it definitely isn’t. But I’m still here, aren’t I? So I guess that’s my answer.”
I’ve been turning all this over in my head all week. I used to think that if you didn’t wake up every day grateful for your life and certain it was all 100% worth it, you were doing something wrong. That everyone else had this big, glowing feeling about life that I just couldn’t seem to hold onto most days. I remember Christmas dinner last year, when my uncle went around the table asking everyone what the best thing we did that year was. Everyone said big stuff: got promoted, bought a house, went to Paris, had a baby. I sat there red-faced ‘cause the best thing that happened to me all year was finding a $5 rosé that didn’t taste like vinegar and my cat learning to high-five. I felt like such a loser, like I was missing the whole point.
But now I don’t know. We’re all out here faking it a little, aren’t we? No one feels like it’s worth it every single day. Some days you get a parking ticket you don’t deserve and you stand on the sidewalk yelling at a metal meter and you think this whole thing is garbage. Some days you eat a peach so juicy it runs down your elbow, sitting on your fire escape, and the neighbor’s kid is playing that new Taylor Swift song out the open window, and your cat curls up on your lap, and for 10 minutes you don’t have any big questions. It just is. And that’s enough, most days.
I don’t have a pretty, wrapped-up answer to the question. I don’t think anyone does. Most of us are just walking around with a few small, stupid things that make it worth getting up for, even on the days it’s not. That’s it, I think. That’s the answer. (Word count: ~1120)
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