What To Do When Your Teen Asks “Do People Really Find Life Worth Living?”
I was folding soccer uniforms after dinner last month, the dryer still warm on the back of my legs, a half-eaten peanut butter granola bar melting into the counter when my 16-year-old Leo leaned in the doorway and asked it straight out: “Do people actually find life worth living? Like, really?”
I almost dropped the crumpled blue jersey I was holding. My first instinct was the generic pep talk I’d rehearsed a dozen times for bad test days and broken skateboards: Of course it is! Look at your dog! Look at pizza! What about that road trip we’re taking this summer? But I paused, because he wasn’t frowning. He just looked tired, the way he does after a full day of AP classes and after-school practice, like he was asking a homework question he couldn’t find the answer to in the textbook.
He sat down on the overflowing laundry basket by the door and explained. A friend of his from math class, Lila, had spent lunch venting about everything going wrong: her parents were splitting up, she’d failed her driver’s test for the second time, and she said most people just fake being happy until they die. She said no one actually enjoys most of life, they just keep going because they don’t have another choice. Leo said he’d seen a dozen TikTok videos saying the same thing that week, talking about how adulthood is just 40 years of paying bills and being tired before you die. He couldn’t stop thinking about it.
I didn’t say anything for a minute. I’ve been a parent long enough to know that when kids ask big questions, they’re rarely asking for an answer from a self-help book. A lot of the time, they’re testing whether it’s okay to say the quiet, scary thing out loud. I folded another hoodie and said, “You know, I had a week back in March that felt exactly like that. I drove back and forth between work, grocery store, your practice, and your sister’s dance class, and I went to bed every single night thinking, Is this all there is? I didn’t tell anyone, because I felt stupid for thinking it as an adult. But yeah. That happens.”
He looked up, surprised. I think he expected me to say he was being dramatic. I pulled out my phone and opened the notes app I’ve had for almost 10 years, labeled “Stuff That Doesn’t Suck.” I started it when I had bad postpartum anxiety after my daughter was born, when I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt anything other than exhausted. It’s full of stupid, tiny things: “Leo snort-laughed at a bad burrito Tuesday”, “Daffodils came up in the front yard”, “Barista remembered I take my coffee with extra cream”, “Dog chased a squirrel and rolled in leaves”. I showed it to him. I said, “I don’t think anyone feels like life is 100% worth living every single day. That’s not a thing. Most days are just okay, or boring, or kind of suck. But I write down the tiny good things because, for me, that’s what adds up. It’s not the big vacations or the promotions or whatever people post about. It’s the stupid little stuff.”
A lot of parents and teachers I know freeze when a kid asks this question. I get it. The first thing that pops into your head is suicide, crisis, get help right now. And that’s an important first check, actually. The first thing I did after he told me about Lila was ask, quiet and direct: “Are you feeling this way right now? Like, do you think life isn’t worth living for you?” He said no, he was just confused, because it made sense what Lila was saying. That’s a concrete question anyone can ask, no training needed. If the answer is yes, you call a therapist or a doctor that day, no exceptions. If the answer is no, you don’t have to panic and turn a normal existential question into a big drama.
The next afternoon, we were walking our golden retriever around the block, and Mrs. Henderson from the corner house was out cutting roses. She handed us two, one pink one yellow, and Leo stuck the pink one behind his little sister’s ear when we got home. I didn’t say anything about the question again, but a week later I borrowed his phone to look up a soccer schedule, and I saw he had a new note called “Good Stuff” with two things in it: “Burned cookies with Lila” and “Mrs. Henderson’s rose”.
I don’t have this all figured out. Some nights I still go to bed wondering what the point of all the laundry and the carpool and the work emails is. Leo still has days where he comes home grumpy and says school is a waste of time. Lila started seeing a school counselor a few weeks ago, which is good, but she still has bad days. No one has given her a perfect answer to the question yet.
The thing I’ve learned, though, is that you don’t have to have a perfect answer. You just have to not shut the question down. Too many of us default to dismissing it: “You’re too young to think that way” or “Just count your blessings” or “Of course life is worth living, look at all you have”. That just tells kids you can’t handle the bad, messy parts of the question, so they’ll stop talking about it next time.
You don’t have to pretend life is this amazing, perfect adventure all the time. You can be honest that it’s messy and boring and hard a lot of the time, and then point to the small stuff that makes it okay. You don’t need a degree in philosophy to do it. You can say, “I hated my job this week, but I stopped on the way home and got a blue popsicle that made it better” or “My back hurts after mowing the lawn, but the neighbor’s cat came and sat with me while I rested”. It’s not a cure for existential dread, and it won’t fix every hard thing a kid or their friend is going through. But it opens the door to keep talking, instead of slamming it shut. Right now, that’s enough.
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