What To Do When Your Teen Asks: Do People Really Find Life Worth Living?
I’m scraping congealed pasta sauce off dinner plates, the dishwasher humming a broken off-key note behind me, when my 16-year-old Luka leans against the kitchen fridge and asks the question. Half a piece of garlic bread sticks out of his mouth, his art class hoodie has a dried coffee stain down the sleeve, and he’s still scrolling TikTok with one hand like he just asked what’s for dessert, not the meaning of life. “Do people really find life worth living?” he says, around a bite of bread.
I fumble the plate I’m holding, catch it at the edge of the sink. I’d been mentally going through my to-do list for tomorrow: drop the dog at the groomer, pick up school supplies for my substitute teaching gig, call the internet company to fix our outages. This wasn’t on the list.
I wipe my hands on my jeans, sit down on the kitchen floor next to our napping tabby, and don’t say anything for a minute. I’ve subbed 10th and 11th grade for three years now, and I hear this question a lot—mumbled in study hall, tossed around in the hallway between classes, posted to the anonymous school message boards kids pass around. Most of the time, when adults hear it, they panic. They assume it’s a suicide note in casual clothes, or they jump straight into a rehearsed pep talk: Of course it’s worth it! You have your friends, your art, your whole life ahead of you!
I remember being 16, asking a version of that question to my mom, and getting that exact pep talk. I shut down immediately, never brought it up again. It felt like she wasn’t actually listening—she was just checking a box for good parenting. So this time, I don’t do that. I say, “Yeah. I wonder that sometimes too.”
Luka looks up from his phone, surprised. I tell him about last Tuesday: three hours on hold with the car insurance company after he crashed his bike into a mailbox, burned the roast for dinner, came home to find the dog had chewed through my favorite work headphones and peed on the new rug. I sat on the back porch after that, drinking a warm soda, and thought, This is just one stupid thing after another. That day, I didn’t feel like life was all that worth living.
First thing I do, though, is ask the direct question I’ve learned to always ask first, no matter how casual the question sounds. I say, “Is this something you’re feeling for yourself right now? If you’re hurting, if you’re scared this won’t get better, we call the therapist tomorrow, no questions, no fuss. I won’t be mad, I just need to know.” Luka shakes his head, says no, he’s fine. He and his friends were just talking about it after school—how all the grown-ups talk about retiring and paying off mortgages and big vacations, but when you look at the news, we can’t afford houses anyway, the climate’s messed up, we’ll be working until we’re 80. He just wants to know if everyone’s faking it.
That’s the thing no one tells you about this question when your kid asks it: most of the time, it’s not a cry for emergency help. It’s developmental. Teens are just outgrowing the fairy tale we sell them—that if you work hard, you get a happy, easy life. They’re starting to see the edges, the grind, the parts no one posts about on Instagram. What they want isn’t a motivational speech. They want the truth.
The practical stuff I’ve picked up from both parenting and teaching is small, easy to do, no fancy training required. First, always lead with that direct check-in: ask if they’re unsafe, don’t beat around the bush. It doesn’t put the idea in their head, it just gives them permission to be honest if they are struggling. Second, don’t lie and pretend life is always great. Kids can spot that lie instantly. If you’ve never had a day where you thought the grind wasn’t worth it, they won’t believe a thing you say next. Third, don’t talk about big, distant things like “one day you’ll be happy when you graduate” or “you’ll have a family of your own that makes it worth it.” Talk about the small, boring, unglamorous things that make it worth it for you right now.
I told Luka that for me, it’s the 10 minutes I have every morning before anyone wakes up, when I drink my coffee on the porch and watch the cardinals fight over the feeder. It’s when he leaves his extra mint gum on my nightstand after I’ve had a bad headache. It’s re-watching the same bad 90s rom-com every Christmas. Most people aren’t walking around feeling this big constant joy, I said. Most days are just okay, some days are bad, and once in a while you get a really good day that makes the rest of it worth sitting through.
He nodded, grabbed the rest of the garlic bread, and headed back to his room to play video games. No big revelation, no heartfelt hug, just a normal Tuesday night.
A week later, I was flipping through his sketchbook when he left it on the couch (I know, I shouldn’t snoop, but I did) and there was a page filled with tiny doodles of tacos, coffee mugs, and our cat, and scrawled at the bottom: worth it = the small boring stuff. Last week, we were driving to school, and he mentioned his math teacher saying he hates grading papers more than anything, but he likes watching kids figure out a problem they’ve been stuck on, so that’s why he keeps doing it. “That makes sense,” Luka said, staring out the window. I turned up the radio and didn’t say anything back.
He’ll ask this question again, I know. There will be bad days, hard semesters, broken hearts, when he decides it’s not worth it, and I’ll sit with that. I don’t have a perfect answer for him. No one does. But I can give him honesty, instead of a rehearsed speech. That’s more than enough, for now.
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