What To Do When Your Teen Asks: Do People Really Find Life Worth Living?
I was wiping spaghetti sauce off the kitchen counter last month, half listening to Lila, my 16-year-old, scroll TikTok on the living room couch. The TV was on a rerun of The Great British Baking Show no one was watching, and her half-eaten bowl of pasta was congealing next to a crumpled bag of Doritos. Then she said it, quiet enough I almost missed it over the sound of the dishwasher: “Do people really find life worth living?” I froze mid-wipe, sponge dripping on the floor.
I’ve taught 11th grade for 12 years, so I’ve heard versions of this question a hundred times, scribbled on exit tickets, mumbled after class when kids linger by my desk. But when it’s your own kid asking, it still knocks the wind out of you. My first instinct was to jump into generic reassurance: Of course it is! Think of your art, your friends, our trips to the lake! But I stopped, because I remembered the last time a kid asked me this in class, and how that line just made him nod and shut down.
Lila sat up, put her phone down, and started listing all her evidence. All the adults we know: my coworker who cries in the parking lot after tough parent-teacher conferences, her aunt who just got laid off and can’t pay her health insurance, even the “happy” influencers she follows who post about burnout every other month. “Everyone’s just tired all the time,” she said. “They work to pay for a house they never get to enjoy, then they scroll social media until they go to bed, and do it again the next day. What’s the point?”
She’s not wrong, is the thing. A lot of life is that monotony, that exhaustion. Teens are genius at spotting the lies we tell them about adulthood: that if you work hard you’ll be happy, that success equals fulfillment. They’re pulling back the curtain, and what they see looks a lot less magical than we promised. Most parents I know panic at this point. They either brush it off as teen moodiness, or overcorrect by spiraling into worry that their kid is depressed, or rush to fix the question with a pretty answer. But that’s the mistake. The question isn’t a cry for a solution, most of the time. It’s an observation they’re testing out, trying to see if anyone will be honest with them.
I sat down next to her on the couch, right on top of the tie-dye stain we made last summer that never came out. I said, “You know what? I don’t always. Last Tuesday, when I had 37 essays to grade over the weekend, the car battery died when I was leaving school, and I got home and realized we had no coffee for the next morning? I sat on the floor of the garage and thought, ‘This is stupid. What’s the point of all this?’” She stared at me, like she’d never heard me say that out loud. She always thinks I’m the person who has it all together, the mom who plans the snacks and remembers the field trip forms and laughs through the bad days.
I told her I don’t think life is some grand thing that’s inherently worth living, just because. I think it’s made of tiny, stupid, unimportant things that add up, most days. I told her about the sticky dinosaur stickers my 10-year-old son sticks on my laptop that I never peel off, even though they get in the way when I’m grading. I told her about the iced coffee at the gas station on Main Street that’s always exactly the right ratio of coffee to cream, and how I stop for it every Friday on the way to school. I told her about how we stay up too late watching bad reality TV when she’s home from school sick, and how even when she’s miserable, that’s my favorite thing sometimes.
Last semester, a boy in my third period wrote that same question on his exit ticket after we read The Stranger. I didn’t send him straight to the school counselor, not because he didn’t need support, but because I knew he wasn’t suicidal—he was just thinking. (Full transparency: if your kid talks about hurting themselves, get help immediately. That’s a different conversation than the one we’re having here.) The next day I brought him a glazed donut from the teacher’s lounge after class, and I said, “I thought about your question all night. I still don’t have an answer, but I get why you’re asking.” We talked for 15 minutes about how his dad works two jobs and is always tired, how no one ever talks about that out loud. He left smiling, and he still stops by my room to chat now.
If your kid or student asks this, the first thing to do is not panic, and don’t lie. Instead of “Of course it is,” try “That’s such a heavy question. What made you think about it today?” That’s it, just that phrase. Let them talk first, don’t interrupt to fix it. Second, be honest about your own bad days. You don’t have to dump all your stress on them, but letting them know you feel that way sometimes too takes away the shame of asking. Third, stop pointing to the big, far-off things to prove life is worth it. You don’t have to talk about college or careers or big vacations. Point to the small thing you’re looking forward to today: the chocolate chip cookie you have in the pantry, the walk you’re going to take after dinner, the new episode of your favorite show that’s coming out tonight.
A week after our first conversation, Lila failed her driver’s test. She came out of the DMV red-faced and slammed the car door, and then she said it again: “Do people really find life worth living?” I didn’t give her a big speech. I just turned the car toward Main Street and said, “No, not today, it doesn’t feel like it. Wanna get that iced coffee?” We got the coffee, and she ranted the whole drive home about how her examiner was a jerk who kept making her nervous, and by the time we pulled into the driveway, she was laughing about how she almost backed into a curb.
She still asks the question sometimes. I still ask the question sometimes. Some days the small things add up enough, and some days they don’t. No one has the final answer. That’s okay, I think. We just get to keep going, together, and stop for iced coffee when we need it.
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