What To Do When Your Teen Asks: Do People Really Find Life Worth Living?
I was scraping leftover penne into the compost bin last Sunday, pasta sauce already streaked down the front of my sweatshirt, when my 16-year-old leaned against the kitchen fridge and asked, out of nowhere, “Do people really find life worth living?” I dropped my spatula in the sink. It clattered loud enough that our cat bolted from the counter.
He’d been scrolling a TikTok thread about quiet desperation for the last 20 minutes, so I asked what got him going. He pushed off the fridge and held up his phone to show me: dozens of comments from people in their 30s and 40s saying they just work 40 hours a week to pay for a house they barely have time to live in, wait for the weekend, then retire and find out their knees are too bad to do all the stuff they waited for. No one’s actually happy, he said. They’re just going through the motions until they die.
I almost said the first thing that popped into my head: Of course it’s worth it, you have so much to look forward to. But I caught myself. As a high school substitute teacher, I’d seen that question before. A month earlier, I’d collected exit tickets after a 10th grade discussion about post-grad plans, and one kid had scrawled at the bottom, Why bother? All you do is work forever.
I’ve learned over the last few years that when kids ask this question, they’re not asking for a motivational speech. They’re not even asking for an answer. They’re pointing out what they can see clearly: most of adult life is unglamorous, repetitive, a lot of work for not a lot of obvious reward. And we’ve done a bad job of showing them the parts that make it worth it, because we only talk about the big stuff: graduating, getting the job, buying the house, going on the big vacation. The small stuff that actually holds it all together never makes it into the conversation.
The first thing I did that night was say, “That’s a really fair question. I think about that sometimes too.” Contradicting kids when they ask this just shuts them down. They already believe what they’ve seen, so telling them they’re wrong doesn’t help. Then I pulled out a chair at the table and asked him to do one small thing: name one person he knows who does something that looks like it matters to them, just for its own sake.
He rolled his eyes at first, said there wasn’t any. Then he said, “Okay, Mrs. Henderson down the street. She gardens, talks to her bees, gives us tomatoes every August. She seems to like that.” Then I asked for another. He said his soccer coach stays two hours after practice every week to help the new freshmen with their drills, and he doesn’t get paid extra for it. That was enough for one night. We didn’t dig any deeper. I put the pasta away and we watched a bad episode of a silly show we like.
That’s the thing no one shows kids on social media. Most people’s life isn’t all good or all bad. It’s 60% grind, 40% tiny, silly, unimportant things that add up to enough. I didn’t give him a big lecture about that, though. I just started pointing those things out over the next couple weeks, when we were out together. I pointed out the guy who works the register at the gas station who draws little dinosaurs on every coffee cup, even when there’s a line out the door. I pointed out the librarian who rearranges the graphic novel shelf every Friday afternoon because she knows all the kids come in first thing Saturday morning. I told him I hate grading papers when I sub, but I like writing silly little comments in the margins of kids’ essays, even when no one notices.
For other parents or teachers, that’s the whole trick, really. You don’t need to have an answer. You just need to stop selling the big, perfect life that doesn’t exist, and start naming the small bits that are actually worth it. If you’re a teacher, next time you have five minutes of dead time before the bell, ask kids to throw out one small thing they’ve seen someone do that looks like it matters. If you’re a parent, next time you’re doing dishes or driving to school, mention your own tiny thing: “I really like drinking my coffee on the porch before anyone wakes up, even in the winter. It’s my favorite thing all day.” You don’t have to make it a big lesson. Just mention it, like it’s a normal thing.
We haven’t had a big wrap-up conversation about this. My son still complains about homework and says adult life looks boring. Last week, though, he stayed after school three days in a row to help the freshman class build their homecoming float, and came home covered in glitter and paint, complaining the whole time but grinning when he showed me the dinosaur they built on the front. He left an extra five dollar tip for our barista last Saturday, and wrote “good toast” on the receipt.
I don’t know if he’ll ever land on a solid yes to that question. I don’t know if I have, honestly. Some days it feels worth it, some days it doesn’t, and that’s okay. The point isn’t to give him an answer he can hold onto forever. It’s just to show him that the worth isn’t in the big stuff you wait for. It’s in the small stuff you do every day, while you’re waiting.
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