When Your Teen Asks ‘Do People Really Find Life Worth Living?’: What I Learned As A Mom And Teacher
Taco Tuesday crumbs still stuck to the kitchen tile, and I was wiping grease off the stovetop with a soapy sponge when my 16-year-old Jax asked it, leaning against the counter, half his attention still on his phone. “Do you think most people actually find life worth living?” His cleats, caked with soccer field mud, propped against the doorjamb, a frayed band-aid peeking out over his ankle from that afternoon’s practice. He didn’t sound sad. He sounded curious, the same way he might ask if I think pineapple belongs on pizza or if the Yeti is real.
My stomach dropped first, the automatic parent panic: Is this a warning sign? Is he hurt? But then he tilted his phone toward me, showing a 20-something creator sitting in a messy dorm room saying 90% of people are just faking it, going through the motions of work and bills and family dinners and no one actually enjoys any of it. “Everyone online is either bragging about how perfect their life is or complaining how terrible it is, so which is it?” he said.
I almost gave the answer I’d defaulted to for years, the one we’re all taught to give: Of course it’s worth it! Look at all the good things you have! But I remembered three days before, when a 10th grader in my English class stayed after school, hands stuffed in her hoodie pocket, and asked me the exact same question. The last time I gave that pep talk answer to a kid who asked this, she just nodded, said okay, and never brought it up again. I set down my sponge, wiped my hands on my jeans, and sat down on the floor next to his cleats instead of pulling out a chair to talk at him.
I said, “Honestly? I don’t think most people walk around feeling like it’s worth it every single day. Some days I just go through the motions: grade 30 papers, fold three loads of laundry, remember to buy milk, and I don’t feel any big rush of joy. I asked that same question when I was your age, too. I still ask it sometimes, after a really bad week.” Jax blinked. He’d clearly prepped for a 10-minute argument against my forced positivity, not that. “Really?” he said. I said yeah.
What I’ve learned over the last five years teaching and raising two kids is that this question isn’t always a cry for help. Sometimes it’s just a kid outgrowing the script adults hand them: work hard, go to college, get a job, get married, have kids, and you’ll be happy. They look around, they see adults tired and stressed, they see online people either faking perfection or admitting they’re miserable, and they’re just asking the obvious question no one ever talks about out loud.
The worst thing you can do is brush it off as teen moodiness, or jump straight to a pep talk full of lies. Kids can smell fake positivity from a mile away. When they ask this, I’ve started doing two simple things that work way better than any speech I’ve ever prepared. First, I pause and answer honestly before I try to cheer them up. If they’re not showing other clear red flags—sleeping 16 hours a day, pulling away from everyone they used to love, talking about being a burden all the time—I lead with a line that almost always disarms them: “That’s such a good question. I still wonder that sometimes.” It doesn’t sound like much, but it immediately takes away the pressure to feel a certain way, and it lets them keep talking instead of shutting down.
Second, I never lead with big achievements or big moments. I don’t talk about my college graduation or our family trip to the beach or anything that looks like the highlight reel everyone posts. I talk about the small, boring, unposted moments that actually add up. I told Jax about last week: I woke up with a migraine, forgot to restock my coffee, flunked the quiz for my annual teacher training, and got a speeding ticket on the way home. I sat at a red light by the city park feeling sorry for myself, and watched a little kid drop his ice cream cone. Before he could start crying, the guy in the car next to me rolled down his window and handed him the untouched ice cream cone he’d just bought for his own kid. That whole interaction took 30 seconds. I still think about it when I have bad days.
I keep a note in my phone, just a running list of those 30-second moments, and I showed it to him. It says things like: Lila (my 10-year-old) brought me a dandelion she thought was a rose, our dog curled up on my feet while I graded, the donut shop guy gave me a free glazed because it was raining. That’s the stuff that makes life worth it for me, not the big stuff that ends up on social media. I’ve started pointing these little moments out as they happen now, too, instead of saving them for big talks. If we’re driving home and see a flock of pigeons chase a kid for a french fry, or the cashier gives us an extra sticker, I just say “That’s one of the good bits. I’m tucking that away for a bad day.” It’s tiny, but it adds up.
After we talked that night, Jax didn’t have some big epiphany. He didn’t close his phone and declare “wow, life is amazing!” He just nodded, read a couple of the notes on my phone, and went back to his room to play video games with his friends. Ten minutes later though, he texted me from down the hall a video of a baby goat chasing a chicken around a backyard, and just said “this counts, right?” I texted back yeah, that counts.
We still talk about it sometimes. Last week he asked if I thought people who don’t have a lot of those little moments still think life is worth it, and I said I don’t know. Some people go through really terrible stuff that makes it hard to see the good bits, and that’s when we help them get support. The question doesn’t have to have one perfect answer. It just matters that we answer honestly, instead of shutting it down. Right now, that’s all I know how to do. That’s enough, most days.
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