Small Celebrations Matter

06 Jan, 2026

We love to contextualise our lives through milestones and moments. Birthdays, anniversaries, New Years are, in themselves, random dates, yet they become milestones because something meaningful happened to us on those days. Increasingly, people are adopting a nihilistic worldview—choosing not to celebrate milestones in the hope of distancing themselves from the world.

The only way we truly understand our lives is through these milestones. The more markers you have, the better you can contextualise your life. They don’t have to be grand “firsts.” They could simply be moments when you did something for the first time—a long trek, your first business, your first failure, your first big fat pay cheque, your first heartbreak. All of these become temporal markers in memory, quietly shaping how our life will be defined when we approach its tail end.

So when I see young people getting excited about even the smallest of their achievements, it makes me happy. I think about the memories they are creating for their future selves. When they eventually hit rock bottom—and at some point in life, they will; it’s inevitable—some therapist somewhere will ask them to look back at moments when they felt like champions. These are the temporal markers their mind will retrieve. I hope people accumulate many such markers, so they have enough stored away for a rainy day.

This also makes me reflect on the kind of life we should live—or whatever remains of it. We should do more things that push us outside our comfort zone. While this advice is cliché, I am approaching it from the perspective of deliberately building more markers—moments where you feel accomplished. Even failures will do in an otherwise mundane life, because failures, too, offer perspective shifts. We need triggers that either elevate our standards or transform how we see the world.

Do not adopt a nihilistic worldview that assumes everything in life is pointless. Life is only pointless if you choose to see it that way. Nobody truly knows how life should be lived. Everyone is living the same single life we are all given; some are simply more experienced in failure. When you think about your life, think about the markers you’ve created—and think about how you can create more. They don’t have to be achievements or accomplishments; they just need to be worth remembering.

So that one day, when you are tired and worn out, with creaking knees and diminishing strength, feeling hopeless, you can look back at the times when you achieved something you once thought was unachievable. That is why celebrating milestones matters. Even birthdays will do. Make memories that help you survive episodes of loneliness.