What To Do When Your Teen Asks: Do People Really Find Life Worth Living?
The pasta water had just gone down the drain, I was scraping crusted parmesan off a plate when my 16-year-old Javi blurted it out from where he was leaning against the counter, phone in hand: “Do people really find life worth living?”
I almost dropped the plate. I’d just been mentally running through my grocery list, wondering if I’d remembered to add laundry detergent, so the question landed like a stone in a puddle I didn’t know was there. Javi’s been quiet lately—he tore his ankle ligament back in October, missed the final soccer season of his high school career, just broke up with his first girlfriend, and is cramming for three AP exams. I knew he was stressed, but I didn’t expect this, out of nowhere, over Tuesday night dinner leftovers.
I wiped my hands on my jeans and pulled out the chair next to him. He flipped his phone around to show me a TikTok: a 20-something guy sitting in a car, talking about how everyone’s just faking it. 40 hours a week at a job you don’t like, paying bills, doing dishes, repeating the same week over and over. No one actually likes this, he said. Most people are just too scared to admit it.
I thought back to when I was 16, sitting at this same kitchen table, asking my own mom the exact same question after a bad day at school. She’d been folding laundry, didn’t even look up. “Of course they do, don’t be silly,” she said, and went back to what she was doing. I never asked again. That’s the thing about this question—when kids ask it, most of us panic or brush it off. We either jump to the worst conclusion (they’re suicidal, we need to get help immediately) or we hand them a generic happy answer that we don’t even believe ourselves.
As a part-time high school study hall teacher, I hear this question come up in quiet corner conversations at least once a month. It’s not always a cry for help, though we should always check in for clear warning signs of self-harm or persistent hopelessness. More often than not, it’s just what growing up looks like. Teens are just figuring out how to think abstractly, and they’re seeing past the stories we tell them about “the good life” — the dream job, the perfect family, the big adventures. They look at our daily lives, at all the boring, repetitive stuff, and they notice that what we show them on social media doesn’t match what we actually do every day. So they ask. That’s not a problem. That’s them developing.
I didn’t tell Javi he was being ridiculous, and I didn’t tell him life is some amazing gift all the time. I just said, “You know what? A lot of days, it really does feel like just checking boxes. Last week I spent three whole days answering work emails I didn’t care about, and I can’t even remember what I did with most of that time. I haven’t pulled out my paint supplies in two years, which is the thing I used to say I loved more than anything. That’s on me, I let other stuff crowd it out.”
He nodded, because he’s seen that. I pulled up my photos app on my phone and scrolled to the picture I took two weeks ago, when I met my friend for coffee after my physical therapy appointment. We sat on a park bench and laughed so hard about a stupid thing that happened at her kid’s school that I spilled iced oat milk all over my white sneakers. I showed it to him, then scrolled to the next one: taken on our way home from camping last summer, he and his little sister asleep in the backseat, their heads leaning against each other, the pink sunset reflected in the rearview mirror. “Most of the stuff that makes life worth it isn’t big,” I said. “It’s 30 seconds or two minutes of something small. Most people don’t feel like life is 100% worth it every single day. I have days where I think it’s all just too much. But most days, there’s at least one of these little bits that makes it okay.”
He was quiet for a minute, then said, “Yeah. That ice cream we got after your knee surgery, when we sat in the parking lot and watched the dogs go by? That was good.”
That night, after he went upstairs, I dug my old paint set out of the back of the hall closet and set it up on the corner of the dining table. I didn’t make a big announcement, I just left it there. A couple days later, I came down to breakfast and saw he’d doodled a lopsided orange cat on the edge of my half-finished canvas.
The thing I’ve learned from these moments, both with my own kid and with my students, is that you don’t need to have a perfect answer. What you do need to do is three small, concrete things: First, stop what you’re doing and give them your full attention. Don’t brush it off to finish loading the dishwasher or answer a work text. It only takes five minutes, and it matters more than any chore. Second, be honest. Don’t lie and say your life is perfect and full of joy every day. Kids see right through that. Admit the boring, hard parts. Third, point to small, specific moments you’ve both shared, not generic big achievements. Grand vacations and promotions don’t feel real to them when they’re staring down a week of homework and doctor’s appointments. The 10 minutes you got ice cream after practice? That feels real.
Last week, we were driving to Javi’s follow-up ankle appointment, and he said out of nowhere, “I think the 10 minutes we get at the taco truck after physical therapy is worth it, even when my ankle hurts the whole time.” I just said “Me too.” We didn’t talk about it anymore. The paint set’s still on the dining table, the orange cat doodle’s still there. I don’t have a final answer for him, and he doesn’t need one. We’re all just figuring it out, one small taco truck trip and one spilled coffee at a time.
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