What To Do When Your Teen Asks: Do People Really Find Life Worth Living?
I’m scraping dried pasta off dinner plates into the compost bin, our golden retriever is inches from my elbow begging for crusts, and the local oldies radio is humming in the background when Javi, my 16-year-old, leans against the kitchen counter and says it. “Mom, do people really find life worth living?”
I almost drop a ceramic bowl. I’ve been a high school English teacher for 12 years, so I’ve heard this question before, but it still hits different coming from your own kid, fresh off a week of midterms and 12-hour coffee shop shifts, his eyes still pink from squinting at TikTok. He’s not crying. He doesn’t look like he’s in immediate danger. He just looks confused, like he just found out the tooth fairy was fake and he’s trying to work out what that means for all the teeth he left under his pillow. “All these guys online say everyone’s just faking it,” he says. “You go to work, pay bills, get old, die. No one’s actually happy. They’re just pretending so no one thinks they’re weird.”
I think about Lila, the 10th grader I had last year who asked the same question after a free write about what we worry about. She’d just lost her dad to a sudden heart attack, and she wrote that she couldn’t stop thinking that everyone else was lying about how good life is. Back then, I panicked. I fumbled through a pep talk about all the good things ahead, called the counselor, and sent her on her way. A week later, she turned in another free write that said I didn’t get it, no one gets it. That’s when I learned the first thing: you don’t have to answer the question. You just have to not flinch at it.
So I leaned against the counter next to Javi, tossed the dog a crust, and said, “That’s such a fair question. When did you start thinking about this?” He talked for 10 minutes, about how midterms feel like they’re supposed to matter for the rest of his life but they just feel like memorizing useless stuff, about how his feet hurt after work and he never has enough time to hang out with his friends, about how every time he opens social media it’s either people bragging about their perfect lives or people saying everything is garbage and no one’s actually enjoying the in-between. I didn’t interrupt. I just nodded. When I was 17, I worked the night shift at a gas station on the edge of town, and I used to stand there wiping down the soda machine thinking the exact same thing. I told him that. I said I thought all adults were just faking it because they couldn’t admit they’d wasted their lives picking the wrong jobs and the wrong houses.
When he was done talking, I pulled out my phone, opened my notes app, and said, “Let’s do this thing I started doing with kids at school. Name three tiny things from this week that didn’t feel like a chore. Things you didn’t mind having happen. No big stuff like ‘getting into college’ or ‘when I graduate.’ Just tiny.” He rolled his eyes at first, but he played along. First, the chocolate chip cookie his head barista gave him after he messed up a big mobile order. Second, the 10 minutes he drove around after school last Tuesday with the windows down, when his new favorite album came on and he didn’t have to talk to anyone. Third, beating his 10-year-old cousin at Mario Kart so bad his cousin threw the controller at him.
I listed mine: the daffodils I planted last fall sprouting yellow blooms by the front porch, the barista at my regular coffee shop remembering I take my latte extra hot, staying up 20 minutes late last night reading a silly cozy mystery that didn’t have anything to do with grading essays. I pointed out that none of these are the things people post about. No one makes a 10-part TikTok series about enjoying a free cookie from a coworker. Most of the stuff that adds up to life being worth living is too small, too boring, too unremarkable to share. That’s why it feels like no one’s actually enjoying anything—we’re all only looking at the loud parts.
With Lila, I did the same exercise a month after that first conversation, pulled her aside between classes, and we spent five minutes listing tiny things. She ended up with her cat curling up on her textbook while she studied, her bus stop friend bringing her extra sour candy every Friday, the way the rain sounds on her bedroom window when she gets to skip PE for a doctor’s appointment. A month after that, she told me she’d started keeping a note in her phone of the tiny things, and when she starts asking that big question again, she just scrolls through the list.
I don’t tell other parents or teachers to fix this question when it comes up. If a kid talks about wanting to hurt themselves, you get emergency help right away, no questions asked. But when it’s just this tired, confused, honest question that teens stumble on when they’re old enough to see the grind of adult life coming and young enough to still be shocked by it, you don’t need a big speech. You don’t need to force them to “look on the bright side.” You just need to not panic, let them talk, and point them toward the tiny stuff they’re already missing because it’s too small to notice.
After we made our list, Javi and I finished loading the dishwasher. He didn’t suddenly throw his arms up and declare life is the best thing ever. He put his sneakers on and took the dog for a walk, like any other Tuesday night. Last night, he came home from work, tossed a lemon drop into my palm, and said “This one’s going on next week’s list.” I still don’t have a perfect answer to the question. Some days I think it is, some days I think it’s just a bunch of tiny good things stuck between a whole lot of boring and hard ones. But so far, this little trick is working. It doesn’t fix everything. It’s just enough.
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