When Your Teen Asks ‘Do People Really Find Life Worth Living?’: What I Learned As A Mom And High School Teacher
The chipped blue ceramic mug was halfway out of the dishwasher last Tuesday when my 16-year-old Lila, still in her faded soccer hoodie, half a granola bar in her hand, blurted it out from the kitchen counter: “Do people really find life worth living?” My golden retriever, who’d been camped out waiting for crumbs, lifted his head like he was waiting for the answer too. I almost dropped the mug. That same morning, a 17-year-old senior in my third period English class had written the exact same line as the opening of his college personal statement draft.
Javi, that senior, was supposed to turn in an essay about a meaningful life experience that shaped him. Instead, after that opening question, he wrote: “I can’t write about how my cross country coach taught me perseverance when I can’t remember the last time I cared about anything that much. All I see when I look at the adults around me is people just going through the motions. I don’t want to spend the next 50 years going through the motions.” I’d read it twice before the bell rang, and I’d already been turning it over in my head all day.
Lila went on to explain what sparked her question: she’d been scrolling a Reddit thread the night before, full of people in their 30s and 40s saying they just work 40 hours a week to pay for a house they never get to enjoy, wait for the weekend, wait for vacation, then it’s all over. She ticked off the examples she’d seen close up: her friend’s mom who got divorced last year and spends most weeknights eating frozen pizza alone watching TV, my cousin who works in finance who says he only looks forward to his annual fishing trip, the barista at our grocery store who told Lila last week she’s just counting down to retirement at 65. “What’s the point of all the studying and college and jobs if that’s all it is?” she said.
My first instinct was to blurt out “Of course it’s worth it!” To give her that pep talk about how her whole life is ahead of her, full of possibilities. But I bit it back. I’ve been teaching for 12 years, and I’ve learned that when teens ask this question, they’re not asking for a motivational speech. They’re asking if you’re going to lie to them, like every other adult they’ve met so far who keeps telling them to work hard for a payoff that never seems to look that fun when they see it up close. So I leaned against the counter, cut a piece of cheddar for the dog (who deserved it for waiting so nicely), and sat down across from her. I said, “Some days I don’t. Some days I spend the whole day grading 30 half-hearted book reports, fixing a leaky faucet that won’t stop dripping, and reminding you three times to take the trash out, and I go to bed thinking, that’s it? That was the whole day?”
Her eyebrows lifted, like she wasn’t expecting me to say that. Then I told her the small stuff I don’t usually talk about. I told her that last Wednesday, I’d had a terrible day: I’d forgotten my lunch, the copier broke when I needed to print midterm exams, and I got a speeding ticket on the way home. But I stopped for gas, and the kid working the counter had a Garfield sticker on his name tag, and we talked for two minutes about how we both used to check out Garfield comic collections from the library when we were kids. That two-minute conversation made the whole bad day feel softer. I told her that last Saturday, when we stayed up late making microwave popcorn and watched that terrible Love Is Blind reunion, I laughed so hard my sides hurt, and that 45 minutes was better than any fancy beach vacation I’ve ever been on.
That’s the thing no one tells kids, right? We spend all this time talking about the big milestones: getting into college, getting married, buying a house, getting a promotion. But those big moments are rare. Most of life is just a bunch of small, unremarkable days, and the thing that makes it worth it isn’t some big grand reward at the end. It’s the tiny, stupid little bits that no one posts about on Instagram.
When I talked to Javi after class that day, I didn’t tell him he needed to rewrite his essay to make it more positive. I told him to keep the question, to write exactly what he thought. We talked about the same small stuff: the way his favorite cheese puffs from the vending machine taste after a long cross country practice, the 10 minutes he spends every morning playing Mario Kart with his little sister before school, the way the sky looks pink when he walks out of practice at the end of the day. He added those things to his essay, and last month he got an acceptance letter from his top choice public university. The admissions counselor scrawled a note in the margin that said “This is the most honest essay I read all year.”
Over the years, I’ve figured out a few simple things that work, both in my classroom and at home. When a kid asks this question, first, don’t panic. You don’t have to rush them straight to therapy (though of course if they’re talking about hurting themselves, you absolutely do that). Most of the time, they’re just observing what we’re all actually feeling, and they want an honest answer, not a script. Second, don’t lie and say it’s always worth it. That just makes you look out of touch, like you’ve forgotten what it’s like to have a string of bad, boring, unremarkable days. Third, don’t ramble about big achievements. Point to the small things that happened to you that week, specific things, not vague “family time” nonsense. Name the 2-minute chat with the gas station clerk, the snort laugh during a bad reality show, the squirrel eating an apple core off your lunch table.
A week after that kitchen conversation, Lila and I were driving to school, and she saw an old man walking his golden retriever down the street, and she said, “I still think most people are just faking it.” I said that’s fair, I think a lot of people are faking it some days too. Yesterday, she sent me a text from her lunch period, a blurry cell phone picture of a squirrel sitting on the picnic table eating half her discarded apple core. The text said, “This guy gets it. He’s just here for the apple core. Maybe that’s enough.” I haven’t pushed her to think anything different. For now, that’s enough for me too.
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