Do People Really Find Life Worth Living? What I Say When My Students Ask
During fourth period last week, Marcus didn’t look up when I returned his essay. The whole class was shuffling papers and complaining about the upcoming quiz, but he just sat there, running his thumb along the edge of his notebook. I walked over and asked if he was all right.
“Yeah,” he said. Then, quieter, “Doesn’t matter anyway.”
I crouched next to his desk. “What doesn’t?”
“Any of it.” He lifted his head just enough to glance at me. “What’s the point? Like, do people actually think life is worth living? Or do they just say it?”
The bell rang before I could answer. He grabbed his bag and left with the rest of them.
That question stayed with me. I’ve been teaching high school English for eleven years, and kids ask it in one form or another every semester. Sometimes it comes out as a joke—”this homework is killing me, what’s the point of anything”—and sometimes it arrives with more weight, in a journal entry or after class when the room is empty.
When I first started teaching, I used to panic a little. I thought I needed to fix it, to offer the right words, to reassure them so firmly that the question would disappear. So I’d say things like “you have your whole future ahead of you” or “everything gets better.” I don’t say those things anymore, because they never seemed to land. The kids would nod and shut down, like I’d just told them the floor wasn’t really falling while their feet felt nothing but air.
It took me a while to understand that when a young person asks whether life is worth living, they’re not usually asking for a debate. They’re not asking me to defend the meaning of existence with evidence and counterarguments. They’re telling me something about how they feel right now. And if I answer with positivity instead of presence, I’m essentially telling them their feelings are wrong.
There’s a difference, too, between casual existential gloom and real danger. The kid who sighs and says “what’s the point” over a Friday test is usually just tired. But the kid who’s been slipping—sleeping through class, pulling away from friends, losing interest in the things that used to hold them—that’s a different conversation. For that kid, I don’t just talk. I involve the school counselor, and I make sure their parents know what I’m seeing. Asking the big question by itself isn’t a red flag. Asking it while slowly disappearing from your own life is.
Two weeks before Marcus said what he said, a student named Elena stayed after class to talk about a poem we’d read. It was a dark poem, the kind where the narrator is deciding whether to go on. Elena asked if I believed the narrator actually wanted to die, or if he just wanted the pain to stop. “Does it matter?” she asked. “If you just want the pain to stop, isn’t that the same thing?”
I remember telling her I wasn’t sure it was the same thing. Wanting the pain to stop is a feeling. Wanting to die is a plan. Confusing the two is where it gets dangerous, I said. She thought about that for a long minute. Then she shrugged and said, “Okay,” and left.
I thought about Elena when Marcus asked his question. I also thought about my own answer, because I’ve asked myself the same thing more times than I like to admit. I’ve had periods where life felt like a chore, where I dragged myself through grading and grocery shopping and conversations I didn’t want to have. In those stretches, I didn’t need someone to tell me it would get better—I needed someone to just be there, doing the dishes alongside me or sitting in silence on the couch.
That’s what I’ve learned about helping young people with this question. They don’t need my certainty. They need my company. So when a student says “what’s the point,” I try to say something like, “I hear you. Life can feel pretty heavy.” Or, “When did it start feeling that way?” Not because I have a set answer, but because I want to keep them talking. The risk is silence growing so wide it swallows them.
I also look for the small attachments. A kid who says life is pointless but perks up when talking about their dog—that’s a thread. The dog is a reason, even if they don’t call it that. I try to point at the thread, gently. “You’d miss your dog, though, right?” or “You seem like you still care about basketball.” It sounds small, and it is. But small things hold more weight than we admit. They’re what feathers a life, day by day.
If you’re a parent or another teacher wondering what to do when a child says something like this, start with the practical. Don’t jump straight to the emergency line. Sit with them. Make dinner together. Go for a drive with no destination and let them control the radio. Ask a genuine question and actually wait for the answer, even if the silence stretches long. The worst response is a pep talk—it tells them their reality is too heavy for you to hold. The most helpful thing you can say is often just, “I’m glad you told me.”
And if there are concrete warning signs—giving things away, withdrawal, changes in sleep and eating, talk of leaving or disappearing—get help. A school counselor, a family doctor, a therapist. You don’t have to solve the mystery of human existence to be the adult who stays present and makes the call.
I didn’t catch Marcus after class that day. I thought about texting his mom, but I didn’t want to overreact to one offhand comment. Still, the comment stuck to the inside of my skull all weekend.
Then Monday, Marcus walked into fourth period five minutes early. He had a coffee in one hand and a paperback in the other—a novel we’d talked about, the one I’d said reminded me of every person I’ve ever loved. He dropped into his seat and said, “This is actually kind of funny.”
I almost asked if he was okay. Instead I just said, “Right? He doesn’t want to stop being a knight.”
“Shepherd,” Marcus corrected. He was smiling a little. “He wants to stop being a shepherd and become a knight.”
“Same thing,” I said.
“Not to him.”
And I thought, there it is. The worth of a life isn’t answered in a single conversation. It’s answered in the next page you turn, the person who says “not to him” and means it.
I don’t know if Marcus found his answer. I don’t really know if any of us do. But I know this: the kids who make it through are the ones who have someone sitting beside them while they wonder. That’s not a grand solution. It’s just what I can offer from behind a teacher’s desk, one day at a time.
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