When Your Teen Asks “Do People Really Find Life Worth Living?”: What I Learned As A Mom And Teacher
The sponge slipped out of my hand and hit the kitchen floor last month when my 16-year-old leaned against the counter mid-cleanup and asked, “Do people really find life worth living anyway?” He’d just finished a half-eaten bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, crumbs dusted the front of his faded soccer hoodie, and our 10-year-old beagle was already nose-down at his feet cleaning up the mess. He wasn’t crying. He didn’t sound hopeless. He just sounded curious, the kind of tired curious that I’ve started recognizing in almost every teen I talk to these days, both my own and the 11th graders I teach every day.
My first instinct was the same I’ve seen every other parent have when this question comes up: I opened my mouth to rattle off the list of all the big good things. Your spot on varsity. The road trip we’re taking to the national park this summer. Your dog. Your best friend who you stay up laughing with until 1 a.m. But I closed it again. Two weeks earlier, a student of mine named Mia had written that exact question at the bottom of her exit ticket after we finished a unit on 20th century poetry. I’d pulled her aside after class and given her that same list of good things, and she’d just nodded and looked at her shoes and never brought it up again. I knew I’d shut the conversation down instead of opening it.
So I leaned against the counter next to my son, wiped my wet hands on my sweatpants, and said, “What made you wonder that today?” He said he’d been scrolling TikTok during his study break, and watched a 32-year-old guy talk about how no one warns you that most of adulthood is just showing up to work, paying your bills, and waiting for the weekend. He said all the influencers my son follows post about their dream jobs and fancy vacations and perfect relationships, but this guy said he couldn’t remember the last time he felt like his life was actually “worth it.” My son kicked another crumb onto the floor for the dog and said, “If that’s what it is, why even bother?”
I’ve gotten so used to hearing this question over the last year that I don’t think it’s the automatic crisis most parents assume it is. Don’t get me wrong: if your kid has stopped hanging out with friends, quit all the activities they used to love, or talks about being a burden to other people, that’s a crisis, and you call their doctor or a therapist immediately. But more often than not, when a teen asks this question, they’re just doing what teens are supposed to do: they’re growing up, and they’re seeing for the first time that the story we sell them about life—go to college, get a good job, get married, be happy—isn’t the whole truth. A lot of life is boring. A lot of life is just repetitive work that doesn’t feel glamorous. They’re calling that out, and they want to know if anyone else sees it too.
I told my son the truth. I said, “I don’t think most people walk around every day feeling like their life is some big, amazing, worth-it adventure. Most days I’m just grading papers, forgetting to take the trash out, rushing to get dinner on the table, and falling asleep on the couch before I even finish my show. A lot of days it feels like I’m just going through the motions. But here’s the thing: the parts that make it worth it aren’t the big stuff. They’re the tiny, stupid, unremarkable bits that no one posts about.” Then I said, “Like right now. The dog’s eating your crumbs, we’re not rushing anywhere, it’s 20 degrees out but the heat’s working in here. That’s a tiny bit that adds up.”
That’s the small practice I’ve started using with my students too, after Mia’s exit ticket. When anyone brings up this question, or writes it down in their work, I don’t give a speech. I just ask everyone to pull out a scrap of paper and write down one tiny thing that happened that week that didn’t feel like a waste. It doesn’t have to be big, it doesn’t have to be meaningful. Last week, one kid wrote “my cat sat on my lap while I did homework.” Another wrote “the fries at the cafeteria were actually crispy yesterday.” Mia wrote “I got a blue raspberry slushie after school on Wednesday, rolled the windows down, and my favorite song came on. For 10 minutes I didn’t think about college apps or my parents fighting. That was good.” No one has to share if they don’t want to, but just the act of looking for that one tiny thing shifts the whole conversation. We don’t have to answer the big question all at once. We just have to notice the small bits that are worth keeping.
After I talked to my son that night, he thought for a minute, nodded, and said “That carnitas taco we got from the food truck last Saturday? That was a really good taco.” Then he grabbed his keys and his skateboard and said he was meeting his friend at the park, and he left. I wiped up the rest of the counter, and the beagle followed me to the living room and curled up at my feet.
Some nights I still wonder the same thing, honestly. Some weeks are garbage: I get behind on grading, my kid and I fight about his homework, the car breaks down, and it feels like what’s the point of all this anyway. But I don’t think we’re supposed to have a perfect answer for our kids when they ask this question. We just don’t have to run from it. We don’t have to lie and say everything is amazing. We just have to invite them to look for the tiny bits with us. It’s not a neat answer, and we’re still figuring it out. But so far, that’s enough.
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