Why Your Teen Might Ask “Do People Really Find Life Worth Living?” And How To Respond
I’m scraping spaghetti residue off ceramic plates, the sink water steaming up my glasses, our golden retriever chewing a hole in my favorite wool sock at my feet. My 16-year-old Leo is leaning against the fridge, his phone face down for a rare 10 minutes, when he asks it out of the blue: “Do people really find life worth living? Like, most people?”
The football game my husband was watching mumbles from the living room, and I almost drop the plate I’m holding. My first instinct is to blurt out the easy, bright answer: Of course! Look at your guitar, look at our dog, look at the beach trips we take every summer. But I stop, wipe my wet hand on my jeans, and sit down on the step stool I keep by the sink for when my back aches. I’d heard the question before, three times that month actually, from 11th graders when I subbed health class at the local high school. It wasn’t coming out of nowhere for Leo, either. His best friend had moved across the country two months prior, he’d just finished four midterms in two days, and his cross country coach had benched him for the last meet of the season because of a minor ankle sprain.
I said, “What made you ask that today?” No alarm, no judgment, just the question. That’s the first trick I’ve learned, after years of parenting and subbing: don’t jump to fix it before you know what it is. Leo pushed off the fridge and sat on the floor next to the dog, said he and a group of kids had talked about it after AP Bio. One kid’s parents are getting divorced, said they’d both been miserable for 10 years and stayed together “for the kids” and now everyone wonders what the point was. Another kid said his dad works 60 hour weeks, hates his job, drinks three beers every night to unwind, and the only thing he talks about is retirement that’s still 15 years away. “Everyone just seems to be faking it,” Leo said. “All the happy stuff on Instagram, all the ‘follow your dreams’ stuff – it just doesn’t match what we actually see.”
That’s the thing no one tells you about this age: teens aren’t just being moody when they ask this question. They’re stepping out of the bubble of childhood, where adults tell them what to value and what to want, and they’re starting to build their own idea of what life should be. Right now, they’re flooded with two conflicting messages: one that says you have to have a perfect, successful, happy life by 22, and another that shows them all the quiet burnout, unhappiness, and unmet expectations adults actually live with. They’re not wrong to ask if it’s all worth it. Most of us adults have asked the same question, we just learned not to say it out loud around kids.
Last semester, I started adding a line to my daily sub check-in that I’ve kept ever since. Instead of just asking kids to write their name and answer a question about the lesson, I add an optional line: “What’s one question you’ve been thinking about lately that no one’s answered?” Almost a third of the time, that question or something very close to it shows up. It’s rarely a cry for immediate help, though it’s always important to check if it is – if your kid says they don’t think life is worth it for them, don’t brush it off, reach out to a professional right away. But most of the time, it’s just kids testing the waters, asking if adults will be honest with them instead of giving them the canned pep talk.
The worst thing you can do is brush it off with “of course it is, just count your blessings” or panic and turn it into a big intervention that makes them never want to bring it up again. After Leo told me about his conversation after school, I didn’t give him a big speech. I just told him the truth: I have whole weeks where I feel the same way. There are weeks where I’m running from one thing to the next, I snap at everyone, I can’t remember the last time I did something just because I enjoyed it. Some parts of being an adult are really boring, really hard, and really not worth bragging about.
Then I told him what I actually think, the small stuff no one posts about. For me, it’s the five minutes every morning before anyone wakes up, where I drink my coffee hot and read a dumb novel no one else likes. It’s when Leo and his sister stop fighting for 10 minutes and make fun of each other’s bad music. It’s walking the dog at dusk when the air smells like cut grass. “It’s not always some big amazing thing,” I told him. “Most days, it’s just a bunch of small stuff that adds up. And some days, there’s no small stuff, and you just get through it. That’s okay too.”
We talked for about 20 minutes, then he grabbed a chocolate chip cookie off the counter and went upstairs to play video games with his friends. He didn’t suddenly have an epiphany and decide life is perfect. A week later, he told me he and his friend Jake went and got mint chocolate chip milkshakes after school and talked for an hour more about it. Jake said no one ever told him it was okay for life to just be okay, that you don’t have to be ecstatic every day for it to be worth living.
Last night, I was folding laundry on the couch after everyone else had almost finished their homework. Leo looked up from his history essay, stretched, and said, “I still don’t know the answer, by the way.” I folded a hoodie of his and said, “Me neither. I think we just get to keep figuring it out, one small day at a time.” He nodded, looked back at his essay, and the dog snored louder at his feet. That’s where we are right now. It’s not a perfect answer, but it’s the honest one.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » Why Your Teen Might Ask “Do People Really Find Life Worth Living