What To Do When Your Teen Asks ‘Do People Really Find Life Worth Living?’
I was wiping pasta sauce off the kitchen counter Wednesday night, the dishwasher leaking a slow puddle at my feet, when my 16-year-old Javi pushed off the doorway where he’d been leaning and asked, “Do people really find life worth living?” The sponge slipped out of my hand, splashing soapy water on my sweatpants. He was holding his phone, screen still glowing with the TikTok FYP he’d been scrolling through after finishing his math homework, half a bowl of cinnamon cereal gone stale next to him on the table.
I almost blurted the automatic response I’d been taught: Of course! Look at all the amazing things waiting for you. But I stopped, because I remember asking my mom the exact same question when I was 15, sitting at this same counter. She’d been mopping the floor then, too, and she’d brushed me off with “Don’t be silly, of course it is” and gone back to work, and I never brought it up again. I didn’t want that for Javi.
So I sat down on the cool linoleum next to him, the dog’s slobbery tennis ball rolling into my ankle. “That’s such a big question,” I said. “What made you think of that today?”
He said he’d been watching a thread of people talking about how they just go through the motions. Wake up, go to work, pay bills, go to bed, do it all again the next day. No one actually enjoys it, they just do it until they die. “We do 12 years of school, then 40 years of work, then retire and die,” he said, picking at a loose thread on his hoodie. “What’s the point of any of it?”
As a part-time high school substitute teacher, I hear this question at least once a month, from kids slumping in the back of study hall who don’t have anyone else to ask. Most of the time, it’s not an immediate cry for help, though I always keep warning signs in mind. It’s just what happens when teens hit that developmental spot where they can finally think abstractly, when they stop taking the adult life we’ve laid out for them at face value. They see all the curated happiness online, all the “live your best life” posts, and then they see us stressed about car repairs and tired after a long day of work, and they start connecting the dots: is this all there is? It’s normal, it just catches you off guard when it’s your kid asking.
I didn’t give him a list of goals or tell him he’d feel different when he’s older. I just told him the truth. “Some days I don’t,” I said. He looked up, surprised, like he expected me to lie. “Last Tuesday, I spent the whole day grading papers, filling out insurance forms, and picking up wet towels off the bathroom floor, and by 7 p.m. I was sitting on the couch thinking this whole thing just feels like a lot of work for no real reason.”
Then I told him the other part I don’t see talked about much. “But the thing no one tells you is that life isn’t worth living because of the big stuff most of the time. It’s the tiny stupid stuff that doesn’t make it onto Instagram. Yesterday, I stopped for gas on the way to school, and the guy in the truck next to me had a little chihuahua wearing a red bandana in the passenger seat, and the dog waved at me with his paw. I thought about that all day. That’s the stuff that makes it worth it.”
He thought for a minute, twisting the loose thread between his fingers. “Like when we get donuts on Saturday and the guy at the shop remembers I want extra glaze on my Boston cream?” I said yeah, exactly that. That’s the whole thing. No one talks about those moments because they’re too small, but they add up to more than any big promotion or fancy vacation ever could.
Our dog grabbed the tennis ball and dropped it on Javi’s lap, and that was pretty much the end of the conversation. He stood up, tossed it across the house, and went back to his room to play games with his friends. I wiped up the puddle from the dishwasher and finished loading it, and that was that.
Over the years, I’ve figured out what works when a kid asks this question, from my own experience and from talking to other teachers and parents. The first thing is don’t panic. If your kid hasn’t been withdrawing for weeks, skipping school, skipping meals, or talking about hurting themselves, this isn’t automatically an emergency. It’s just a question, a way of testing if you’ll be honest with them. The second thing is don’t rush to fix it. You don’t have to have the perfect answer. Just start by asking them what made them think of it, so they get to talk first instead of getting a pre-written speech. Third, be honest about the bad parts. If you only ever tell them life is amazing, they won’t believe you, because they can see you’re tired and stressed sometimes. Admitting that some days suck doesn’t make them think life isn’t worth it—it makes them trust you when you talk about the good parts. Fourth, point to specific small things you both have actually experienced, not vague stuff about the future that feels far away to a teen.
Last week, we were driving to Javi’s soccer practice, and he said out of nowhere, “I saw that chihuahua with the red bandana at the grocery store yesterday. His owner waved at me.” I said, “Yeah?” He said, “Yeah, that was nice.” Then he turned up the volume on his playlist, and we didn’t talk about the original question again.
I don’t know if I gave him the answer he was looking for. I don’t know if he’ll go through periods where he still doesn’t think life is worth it, because that’s just part of being human sometimes. I don’t have the perfect answer myself, some days. But I know he didn’t walk away from that conversation thinking I’d lie to him to make him feel better. That’s more than I got when I asked the same question, and that’s enough for right now.
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