When Your Teen Asks “Do People Really Find Life Worth Living?” What I Learned As A Teacher And Mom
Last period Friday, mid-October, rain streaking the classroom windows, the heat clicking on and off every five minutes. My 11th graders were shoving notebooks into backpacks, talking over each other about weekend plans, when I noticed Mia hanging back by my desk. She usually sits in the back row, wears faded flannel, turns in all her work a day early, and never volunteers to speak out loud. She crumpled a free write sheet in one hand, twisted her backpack strap with the other, and when the last kid left, she asked, quiet enough I almost missed it: “Do people really find life worth living? Like, most of us. Be honest.”
I was mid-sip of lukewarm coffee, almost choked. I’d expected her to ask for an extension on a paper, or about college application deadlines, not that. I remembered a year earlier, my own 14-year-old son had flopped on the kitchen counter after dinner and asked me the exact same question. Back then, I’d panicked, immediately launched into a list of all the wonderful things life had to offer: travel, friends, accomplishing your goals, all that garbage. He just rolled his eyes, said “Okay, whatever,” and went to his room, and didn’t bring it up again for months.
So this time, with Mia, I didn’t do that. I pulled an extra chair up to my desk, told the teacher waiting outside the door I’d be two minutes, and said “That’s such a good question. I think about that a lot, actually.” She relaxed a little, leaned against the desk. She said it wasn’t anything bad, no one hurt her, she wasn’t planning anything, she’d just been noticing lately how much everyone complains. Her mom complains about her admin job every single night over dinner. Her dad complains about his commute, about the cost of groceries, about how his favorite sports team always loses. Even her favorite TikTok creators, who post all these fancy travel videos, complain nonstop about how tired they are, how hard work is, how they can’t ever catch a break. “It seems like everyone’s just dragging themselves through it waiting to die,” she said. “Am I missing something?”
I told her I get that. I told her when I was her age, I thought the same thing. I thought once you graduated college, got a job, got a house, everything would be this big exciting thing that felt worth it. And then I got all those things, and I still complain about grading papers at 9 PM, about my leaky faucet, about how I can never afford to go to the dentist as often as I should. The big stuff doesn’t stay exciting forever.
Then I told her about the Tuesday before that, when I stopped for gas on the way to school. The guy who works the morning shift knows I get a medium iced coffee with extra cream, and he had it poured and waiting for me before I even got to the counter. He slipped a free peppermint into my cup holder because he’d heard me mention it was my birthday the week before. That was it, that was the whole thing. It wasn’t a big party, it wasn’t a promotion, just a guy remembering a small thing about me. And that made the whole 6 AM drive in the rain worth it, to me.
I told her about last weekend, when my son and I were patching a hole in our backyard fence. We didn’t have a big heart to heart, we didn’t do any fancy bonding. We just passed the hammer back and forth, shared a crumpled bag of cheese puffs, and watched a squirrel steal a piece of bread off our picnic table and run up a tree with it. We laughed for two minutes about how bold that squirrel was. That small thing made the whole rainy Saturday, which I would’ve rather spent napping on the couch, worth it.
That’s the thing I’ve learned, the thing I wish more adults told kids: life isn’t worth living because of the big milestones we all post about. It’s worth living because of a hundred tiny, unremarkable things like that, that no one ever talks about out loud. We’re so used to only talking about our big wins and our big complaints that we forget to mention the small good stuff in between. That’s what leaves kids thinking we’re all just miserable. They see all the complaining, don’t see the little bits that keep us going, so they assume the worst.
It’s so easy to adjust this, actually. You don’t need to start therapy, you don’t need to plan a bunch of expensive special trips to prove life is good. All you have to do is start talking about the small good stuff out loud, every day. Instead of only complaining about your commute, say “Ugh, traffic was terrible today, but I got to listen to that whole new episode of my podcast I’ve been waiting for, that was nice.” Instead of only complaining about folding laundry, say “This sweater still smells like the campfire from our trip last month, that’s my favorite smell.” When your kid asks that question, don’t lead with the automatic “Of course it is!” That just feels like a lie, because they’ve already heard you complain a hundred times that week. Start with “That’s such a good question, I’ve wondered that too,” then tell them about one of your recent small good things.
A month later, Mia turned in a free write about what she’d been thinking about lately. At the very bottom, after the assignment, she scribbled a little side note: “Stopped at the donut shop before school yesterday. The lady behind the counter gave me an extra donut hole because I said I had a calc test. That was good.” It’s not some big transformation. She still seems quiet, still complains about homework like every other kid. But she noticed.
My son still brings this up every few months. Last week, he said “Most people are just getting by, aren’t they?” I said yeah, most of us are just getting by. And that’s okay. The getting by, with all the small good bits tucked in between, is enough. I don’t have all the answers for him, or for Mia. Some days I still wonder the same thing myself. But that’s part of it, too. We don’t have to have it all figured out to keep showing up, and pointing out the extra donut holes when we find them.
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