What To Do When Your Teen Asks ‘Do People Really Find Life Worth Living?’
Taco Tuesday, leftover guac sweating in a glass bowl on the counter, our golden retriever camped by the table waiting for a dropped tortilla chip. I’m stacking plates in the dishwasher, hole in the toe of my worn wool sock, when my 16-year-old Lila, slouched on the couch scrolling TikTok, says it out of nowhere: “Mom, do people really find life worth living?”
I almost dropped the ceramic plate I was holding. My first instinct was to run through the suicide warning signs I’d saved on a parenting Instagram: Is she sleeping too much? Has she given away her favorite things? But when I turned to look, she wasn’t crying, wasn’t even upset. She just had that furrowed, curious brow she gets when working through a tricky algebra problem or arguing with her best friend about a new show. So I wiped guac off my hand onto my jeans, sat down next to her on the lumpy couch cushions, and waited.
She explained the TikTok she’d just watched: a 27-year-old guy talking about how he fakes liking his 9-to-5, how most people he knows are just going through the motions waiting to retire. And Lila said she’d started noticing it too. Her AP Bio teacher complains about grading every single day. My sister complains about her kids fighting nonstop. I complain about my commute and the electric bill going up for the third time in a year. “Is everyone just pretending it’s good?” she asked.
I’ve been there. I used to default to the big pep talk: Of course it’s worth it! You’ll go to college, fall in love, have all these amazing adventures. But I’ve learned that answer doesn’t help. Big adventures are rare, and they’re years away for a 16-year-old who’s just trying to get through a week of midterms. So this time, I told her the truth.
I said she’s right, most days are just going through the motions. Last week I cried for 15 minutes because I burned the sourdough I’d waited three days to proof, and I had to throw the whole thing out. I spent three nights reworking a work presentation, and then my boss said we’d push it to next month. I forget to call my own mom half the time, and I feel guilty about it pretty much every day. But then I told her about the Wednesday before, when I stopped at a red light by the park on my commute home. A family of ducks was waddling across the street, the little ones wobbly and half-falling behind their mom, and every driver stopped to wait. I sat there on my brake for three minutes just watching, and that was nice. Last night I folded laundry while she did homework, and I found a forgotten strawberry lollipop in the pocket of her old winter jacket, and it was still good. I even like when the dog gets muddy after a walk and shakes water all over me, even though I have to change my shirt. None of it is big, none of it goes on Instagram, but it adds up to enough, most days.
Before I switched to part-time curriculum work, I taught high school English, and I heard this question all the time. Usually it came up after our unit on existentialism, kids would scribble it in the back of their journals or stay after class to ask quietly. One sophomore, Jake, wrote that he was convinced everyone else was secretly miserable and just faking it, because no one ever talked about the boring, hard parts. I used to make the mistake of giving big speeches about all the amazing things waiting for them after graduation, until I realized that just makes the question worse. Kids don’t care about amazing things 10 years from now when they’re sitting in class wondering if today is worth getting through.
I started small, after that. If a kid asked the question, I’d answer with one or two unglamorous good things from my own week, just like I did with Lila. If I was still in the classroom full time, I’d even spend five minutes at the start of class once a week letting anyone who wanted share one tiny good thing—no big achievements allowed. If you don’t want to share, you just pass. It’s no prep, low effort, and it lets kids see everyone else is carrying the same small, quiet good stuff alongside the hard parts.
The thing no one tells you is that when kids ask this question, most of the time it’s not a cry for help (though of course, if you notice consistent withdrawal or talk of self-harm, you reach out for professional support right away). It’s just them growing up. They’re peeling back the curated, fun version of life we show little kids, and they’re seeing the real thing for the first time, and they’re confused. The worst thing you can do is shut the question down: Don’t say that’s silly, of course life is worth living. Don’t rattle off a list of all the things they have to be grateful for. That just makes them think they’re wrong for asking, and they won’t bring it up again.
The best thing you can do is meet them where they are. Start with “That’s such a good question, I think about that too.” Then share the small stuff, not the big milestones. Big milestones happen three times a decade. Most of life is the in between.
A week after that Taco Tuesday conversation, we were walking the dog around the block after dinner, and Lila kicked a cracked acorn across the sidewalk and said, “I still think most days are kind of whatever.” I said, “Me too.” She said, “But the whatever isn’t that bad, right? Like, our cat snores on my feet while I do homework, and that’s pretty okay.” I said, “Yeah. That’s pretty okay.”
We haven’t answered the question for good. Some days she’s more down about it, some days she’s too busy laughing at dumb memes to think about it. I still don’t have a fancy, perfect answer. But sitting with the question, instead of rushing to fix it, is enough for right now.
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