What To Do When Your Teen Asks “Do People Really Find Life Worth Living?”
I was scraping caked-on pasta sauce off dinner plates, soapy water up to my wrists, when my 16-year-old Lila asked it from the couch. “Do people really find life worth living?” The baking contest rerun on TV blared on, half a bag of chocolate chip cookies sat open between us, and she didn’t even look up from her phone when she said it. She just frowned at the screen, like she was waiting for me to give her a straight answer.
I froze. My first instinct was to blurt out the automatic thing: Of course it is! What a silly question! But I’d just had that kind of week. My car’s alternator died on the way to work Monday, I missed a client deadline Tuesday, I’d fought with my sister about our mom’s upcoming doctor’s appointment Wednesday. Three straight days where I’d left the house thinking I just wanted to climb back into bed. So lying felt wrong.
I wiped my hands on my jeans, sat down next to her on the lumpy couch cushion that never stays fluffed, and said, “That’s a really good question. I think about it sometimes too.”
She finally looked up. She said she’d just watched a TikTok where a woman in her 30s talked about faking being happy every day, that most people she knows are just going through the motions waiting to retire. “Everyone online is posting their perfect trips and their perfect grades and their perfect dinners,” she said. “But when I talk to my friends off the grid? Everyone’s tired. Everyone’s stressed. Mr. Henderson, my math teacher? He told us last week he’s only working until he can retire, that he hasn’t enjoyed teaching in 12 years. Aunt Mandy complains about her job and her husband every time we see her. Is everyone just faking it?”
I didn’t give her the big, cheesy speech about how my life is perfect because I have her. That always felt like a lie anyway, like putting all the weight of my happiness on her shoulders. Instead I told her the truth of my small days. “I don’t think anyone feels like it’s worth it all the time,” I said. “I spent 40 minutes sitting in my car in the grocery store parking lot day before yesterday, just because I didn’t want to come in and buy milk and put away groceries and make dinner. I almost just sat there the whole night. But for me, it’s the tiny stuff that adds up. It’s when you leave your half-drunk iced tea on the counter every morning, and I pretend to be annoyed that I have to throw it away, but I like that it’s there, that you were here. It’s getting a warm cinnamon donut from the gas station when it’s raining on the way to work. It’s when our old cat curls up on my feet when I’m working, even if he snores too loud. None of that is big enough to post about, but it’s there.”
After that, I turned to her and asked straight out, “Have you been feeling like life isn’t worth it for you lately? Be honest.” That’s the step a lot of people skip, either because they’re scared to ask or they assume the question means the worst. It doesn’t hurt to ask straight—if they are hurting, you need to know, and if they’re not, it just gives them space to say that. She shook her head. “No, not really. I’m just tired of feeling like I’m supposed to be having the best years of my life right now, and most of the time I just want to take a nap and not do homework. It feels like I’m doing something wrong.”
I used to teach 8th grade language arts, and I got this question at least once a semester, usually after we finished a book that didn’t have a neat happy ending. For years I made the same mistake: I’d shut it down to get back to the lesson, or give a vague speech about how the future is full of amazing things. Then one year, after a 13-year-old asked it in the middle of our discussion of The Giver, our school counselor sat in on the next class and pointed out something that’s stuck with me. Most of the time, when kids and teens ask this question, they’re not in immediate danger. They’re sorting out what they believe, and they’re testing you to see if you’ll be honest with them, instead of feeding them the same polished lie everyone else does.
If you’re a teacher, you don’t have to rearrange your whole lesson plan to answer it. You can just say, “That’s such an important question, let’s go around quick—anyone who wants can share one tiny thing that makes their day worth it, no pressure to talk if you don’t want to.” I’ve done that, and half the kids will say something silly like “good pizza” and the other half will say quiet things, and suddenly everyone realizes they’re all having the same unspoken thoughts. If you’re a parent, you don’t have to have the answer. You just don’t have to lie about your own hard days to make them feel better. When you pretend everything is perfect all the time, it makes them think they’re the only one struggling, that their bad days mean their life isn’t worth living.
A week after that dinner conversation, we were driving to her soccer practice, and she brought it up again. She said she’d asked her best friend the same question, and her friend said she thinks life is worth it just for the street tacos they sell by the skate park. We both laughed so hard I almost missed the turn.
Last week, I found her notebook open on the kitchen counter when she ran out to meet her friends. She’d made a list, titled “Things that are worth it.” It had iced coffee that stays cold until third period, the cat falling asleep on my homework, when mom burns toast but still gives me half, good fries, memes that make me snort-laugh in class. No big achievements, no perfect family trips, just the small stuff. I closed the notebook back up and didn’t say I saw it.
Some days, Lila still comes home and says everything sucks and nothing matters. I don’t try to talk her out of it anymore. I just hand her a cookie and sit with her. I don’t have the final answer to her question. I don’t think anyone does. But I can give her honesty, instead of a lie. That’s enough, for right now.
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