What To Do When Your Teen Asks ‘Do People Really Find Life Worth Living?’
The lemon dish soap stung my chapped knuckles as I scrubbed a burnt pasta pot Saturday evening, and Lila, my 16-year-old, was perched on the edge of the kitchen counter twisting a frayed hair tie around her wrist. She’d just gotten home from hanging out with friends, half a granola bar sticking out of her hoodie pocket, and I was expecting her to ask for gas money or a ride to the mall Sunday. Instead she said, quiet enough I almost missed it over the dishwasher: “Mom, do people really find life worth living? Like, actually?”
I dropped the sponge into the soapy water. I’ve volunteered one afternoon a week in my local high school’s guidance office for three years, so I hear this question a lot, but I still wasn’t ready for it from my own kid, out of nowhere, while I cleaned pasta off a pot.
She went on, picking at a loose tile on the counter: All the adults she knows are just tired. Her AP Bio teacher just got divorced and talks about how she can’t afford to take time off work. The barista at her favorite coffee shop quit and moved back in with her parents because she couldn’t pay rent. All the stuff we tell kids to work for—good college, good job, a house of your own—looks exhausting, and no one seems that happy once they get it. Why bother, if that’s the end goal?
I could have done the thing I did when I was her age and first asked this question to my own mom: I could have said of course it is, you have so much to look forward to, just focus on school and stop overthinking. My mom said that, and I never brought it up again. I walked around for years thinking there was something wrong with me for feeling the way I did, for noticing that the adults around me looked just as tired and unimpressed with life as I did.
Instead I pulled the stopper to drain the sink, dried my hands, and sat next to her on the cold counter. I said, “Some days I don’t. Last week, when I spent three hours on hold with the insurance company after your flu shot, I sat in the parking lot thinking this whole thing is just a bunch of annoying stuff we have to get through, one after another.”
She blinked, like she wasn’t expecting me to say that. That’s the first concrete thing I’ve learned from hearing this question over and over: don’t lie. Kids can spot fake positivity immediately, and if you tell them life is always amazing and worth it, they’ll shut down and never ask you again.
The second thing: you don’t have to give them a big, sweeping answer. You just have to show them how most of us actually get through. I told her, “But yesterday, I stopped for gas on the way home from work, and there was a golden retriever in the car next to me, sticking his whole head out the window. His owner gave him a bite of her vanilla ice cream, and he wagged his tail so hard the whole car shook. I sat there and watched them for 10 seconds, and I thought, okay, this is nice. That’s enough for that day.”
I pulled a chocolate chip cookie out of the jar we keep on the counter, split it in half, and handed her one. That’s another small, concrete thing you can do: don’t pressure them to have a big emotional talk. Offer food, sit with them, let the conversation go slow if it goes at all. It’s also important to know the difference between this kind of existential questioning and a crisis. If your kid says they don’t want to be alive, or they can’t see a point to going on, that’s when you call your pediatrician or the school counselor right away. But this question, the one that asks if everyone else is just faking it? That’s just development. Teens are starting to see the world as it really is, not the way we frame it for them when they’re little, and they’re checking to see if other people notice the same thing.
Lila ate her half of the cookie and said she’d had that moment too. The week before, she and her friend Mia had walked home from school, cut through the empty lot by the park, and found a whole patch of wild strawberries. They ate every last one, right there in the grass, and they were so sweet she forgot to worry about her upcoming SAT for 15 whole minutes. That was that. She got off the counter to text Mia about a concert, and we didn’t talk about it again for a month.
Last week, though, she mentioned that a friend of hers had posted the exact same question on her Instagram story. Lila commented back the part about the wild strawberries. A dozen other kids commented after her, talking about their own 10 or 15 minutes of good: a cat that curled up on their lap during math class, a really good taco they got after school, a song that came on the radio that made them smile.
For teachers who get this question from kids in class, you don’t have to pivot back to the lesson plan right away. You can say “That’s a question I still think about too. Let’s take two minutes—anyone who wants to can share one small thing that made this week okay.” It doesn’t take much time, and it lets kids see they’re not the only one asking.
Last night, I was folding laundry in the living room, and Lila looked up from her show and said “I still don’t know the answer, by the way.” I folded a pair of her socks and said “Me neither. That’s okay.” She turned back to her show. Some days the car breaks, the roast burns, the insurance company puts you on hold for three hours. Some days you get wild strawberries or a golden retriever eating ice cream. We don’t have to have the big, perfect answer for our kids. We just have to not lie, and point out the small good bits when we see them. That’s enough, for now.
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