What To Do When Your Teen Asks: Do People Really Find Life Worth Living?
I was wiping spaghetti sauce off the kitchen counter last Wednesday, my chipped coffee mug sweating next to the toaster, when my 16-year-old Lila asked it from the couch. She’d been slouched there for an hour after school, half a bowl of mac and cheese congealing next to her, phone face down. “Mom,” she said, like she was asking what we had for breakfast, “do people really find life worth living?”
I almost dropped the sponge. I’d just been mentally running through my grocery list, trying to remember if we needed more laundry detergent. For a second, all the parenting alarm bells went off: Is she okay? Is this a cry for help? Should I call the therapist right now? But then I looked at her, her socks with a hole at the toe, her shoulders not hunched like they get when she’s really panicking, just curious, in that tired, overstimulated way teens get right after midterms.
I pulled out the wooden kitchen chair across from the couch and sat down. “That’s such a good question,” I said. “I’ve wondered that too.”
When I was 16, I asked my own mom the exact same thing. I’d just spent a week listening to all the adults around me complain: my dad about his commute, my aunt about her divorce, my English teacher about how she couldn’t afford to fix her car. My mom’s answer was quick, bright, what she thought I wanted to hear: “Of course it is! Just wait until you grow up and have all these amazing experiences.” It made me feel like I was broken for even asking, like I couldn’t see the good thing that was right in front of me. I never asked her again.
I didn’t want that for Lila. So I didn’t give her the big pep talk about all the amazing adventures waiting for her. Those are the lies we sell kids, right? We tell them life is a series of big, happy moments: graduation, a dream job, a wedding, a house with a white picket fence. But they see us every day. They see us coming home tired, complaining about bills, snapping at each other over missed garbage pickup. They know the big moments are rare, so that answer doesn’t land.
Instead, I told her about my Tuesday. I’d finished tutoring at the high school right as the rain started pouring. I stopped at the gas station off the highway to fill up, and I went inside to get a drink. They had those warm lemonades in the machine by the register, so I got one, and I sat in my car for five minutes while the rain beat on the windows, listening to that Taylor Swift album I loved when I was her age. That five minutes wasn’t life-changing. It wasn’t anything I’d post about. But it was good. It was just mine. I told her I think a lot of life is made of those five minutes, the ones we don’t talk about or even remember the next week, but they add up.
I told her I also get it, that a lot of days it doesn’t feel worth it. Some weeks I just go from folding laundry to answering work emails to driving someone to soccer practice, and I can’t remember the last time I did something that felt fun. I don’t lie about that. Lila nodded, and said her AP Bio teacher had told the class last week he almost quit teaching last month, because all the mandatory meetings and testing took all the fun out of it. That’s what got her thinking. Her friend’s older sister graduated college last year, works 60 hours a week at a marketing job, can’t afford rent on her own, and says she’s just counting down to retirement, which is 40 years away. What’s the point of that, Lila asked.
I didn’t argue with her. I said that’s true for a lot of people, that a lot of systems are broken, that a lot of people have to work jobs they hate just to pay rent, and that sucks. But I also said most people don’t talk about the small stuff that keeps them going. I mentioned her dad: he complains about his commute every single day, but last month he spent three weekends building that little bookshelf Lila wanted for her room, and when he was done, he sat on the floor with a beer and looked at it for 10 minutes, like it was the best thing he’d ever made. That was his five minutes.
After a minute, Lila said she had one of those last week. She walked our dog after school, the sky was all pink and orange after the rain, and the dog stopped to sniff a bush, and Lila stood there watching the ducks on the pond down the street, and she forgot about her midterm study guide for 10 whole minutes. She said it felt good.
I volunteer as a tutor three days a week at the local high school, and I’ve had at least five different teens ask me this exact question in the last year. It’s not just moody teen behavior, like we used to write it off as. It’s just them growing up, seeing past the fake perfect life we show on social media and in school assemblies. If your kid asks you this, the first thing to do is don’t panic. If they’re talking specifically about their own life, if they say they don’t feel like theirs is worth living, that’s when you reach out for professional help right away. But when they ask the general question, when they’re just working out what adulthood actually is, you don’t need a perfect answer.
You don’t have to give them a speech. Just say you’ve wondered the same thing. Share one small, specific good moment you’ve had recently, not the big vacation or the promotion, the 5 minutes of warm lemonade in the car or the 10 minutes looking at a finished bookshelf. Admit that a lot of life is hard and boring, that a lot of things are unfair. That honesty matters more than any perfect pep talk.
Last night, Lila sent me a text from her friend’s house. It was just a photo of the orange sunset over the grocery store parking lot, no caption. I saved it to my camera roll. I still don’t have a perfect answer to the question. Some days I think yes, some days I think it’s as good as you make it with the small bits you get. But I’m glad I didn’t brush her off. That’s more than enough for now.
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