What To Do When Your Teen Asks: Do People Really Find Life Worth Living?
I’m wiping crumbs off the kitchen counter, the dishwasher still humming after our post-soccer-practice dinner, when my 16-year-old Javi looks up from his phone and asks it, plain as if he’s asking what’s for dessert. “Mom, do people really find life worth living?”
My hand stills on the dish towel. The half-eaten plate of garlic pasta sits in front of him, his cleats propped on the leg of the chair, mud crusted on the laces. He bailed on the movie he was supposed to go to with his friends an hour earlier, said one of them got sick and the rest bailed, so he came home. I’d left him alone scrolling, figuring he just wanted quiet.
I almost say the automatic thing: Of course it is! You have so much to look forward to. But I remember when I was 16, sitting across from my own mom at this same kitchen table (it was new when we bought this house, but it’s the same shape) asking the exact same question after reading a bunch of anti-capitalist zines and panicking about nuclear war. She said that automatic thing, pointed out the azaleas blooming in the front yard, and I never brought it up again. I left the conversation feeling like my question was wrong, like I was broken for thinking it.
So I pull out the chair across from Javi and sit down. “Some days I don’t, honestly,” I say.
He blinks, like he wasn’t expecting that answer. “Really?”
“Really,” I say. “Last Tuesday, I spent all day at work in back-to-back meetings that went nowhere, came home to a water heater leak, and the cable was out when I finally wanted to watch that show I like. That whole day sucked. I went to bed that night thinking it was just one more garbage day that didn’t need to happen. But the day before that? I drank my coffee hot, all by myself, after you and your sister left for school, and I watched the squirrel that lives in our oak tree steal peanuts from the bird feeder for ten whole minutes. That ten minutes was worth it. When we got that flat tire on the way to your tournament last month, we sat in the rain eating gas station Sour Patch Kids while we waited for the tow truck. That 20 minutes was worth it. It’s not all one thing or the other.”
As a 10th grade English teacher, I get this question more than most people think. Last month, a quiet student of mine turned in a journal entry answering the prompt “What’s on your mind” with nothing but that same question, plus a line about how acing the midterm doesn’t matter if we’re all dealing with unlivable heat and unpayable student loans by the time she graduates.
I’ve talked to other parents who panic when their kid asks this, immediately jump to scheduling a therapy appointment or launching into a big speech about gratitude. It’s true that if your kid says every single day is never worth living, that’s a sign you need to reach out for more help. But 9 times out of 10, this isn’t a cry for an emergency intervention. It’s just a kid starting to see the world clearly, for the first time. They’re cutting through the fake happy Instagram posts and the “just work hard and you’ll win” speeches from school, and they’re asking if the real thing is actually good enough.
The first concrete thing I do now, whether it’s my student or my own kid, is just meet the question where it is, don’t rush to fix it. Instead of opening with a forced positive answer, I start with “That’s such a good question, I’ve wondered that too.” That one line takes away the shame of asking. Kids think they’re the only ones who think this, because all the adults around them pretend everything is fine. Admitting you’ve wondered it too disarms that immediately.
The second thing I don’t do is talk about big, distant milestones. When you tell a 16-year-old “you’ll have a great job and a family one day, that’s what makes it worth it,” that feels as abstract to them as talking about retirement feels to me. It’s too big, too far away, and it doesn’t answer the question they’re actually asking, which is what is it like right now, for adults, that makes getting up in the morning worth it. Instead, I name the tiny, unglamorous moments that actually add up. The way cold watermelon tastes on a hot day after mowing the lawn. Staying up 20 minutes too late talking about nothing with a friend. The first time you turn the heat on in the fall and it smells like dust and home. Those are things any kid can recognize, because they’ve had them too.
And the third thing is, I don’t lie about the bad stuff. I don’t say everything works out if you try hard. I admit that a lot of life is boring, unfair, and really hard. A lot of systems are broken, a lot of days you just go through the motions, and that’s okay. Life doesn’t have to be one big meaningful adventure to be worth showing up for.
Our old golden retriever wandered in halfway through our conversation, dropped his slobbery tennis ball at our feet, and we had to pause to throw it down the hall a couple times. When we sat back down, Javi didn’t say anything big. He just nodded, and went back to scrolling on his phone, but 10 minutes later he asked if I wanted to play a round of Mario Kart with him before bed.
We haven’t had the big final conversation that settles this question forever. Javi still shares doomer memes on his Instagram story, still complains that there’s no point in studying for the SAT when he’ll never afford a house anyway. But he asks me about it now, when he’s thinking about it, instead of just sitting with it alone. That’s more than I got when I was his age, and that’s enough for me right now.
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