The Eye of the Beholder

There was a time when beauty seemed fairly straightforward.

Beauty was a perfect sunset. A beautiful face. A new city waiting to be explored. A meal so good it ruined all future versions of that meal forever.

Beauty was something I found. Something I looked at. Something I admired from a distance.

And to be fair, I still feel that way sometimes.

I’m still capable of stopping mid-conversation because the light filtering through the trees is just too beautiful to ignore. I still crouch down to admire wildflowers as though I’ve never seen one before. I still pause for that earthy smell that lingers after the rain has passed. I still have entire conversations with dogs before acknowledging the humans they’re with. Some things, thankfully, never change. 😄

But over the years, my understanding of beauty has expanded. Not because I became wiser, but because life kept revealing it in places I never expected.

The things we admire at one stage of life are often very different from what moves us later. At one point, beauty was achievement. Then it became freedom. Then adventure. Then healing. Then peace. Then truth.

Somewhere along the way, I began to realize that what we find beautiful often says as much about us as it does about the thing we’re looking at.

Something Deeper in an Old Saying

                  “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

We’ve all heard it. And most of us assume it simply means people have different tastes. One person likes mountains, another likes beaches. One person likes modern art, another stares at it wondering whether a toddler accidentally wandered into the gallery. 

But I think there may be something deeper hidden within that old saying.

The “eye” isn’t only the physical eye. It’s our awareness. Our consciousness. Our way of seeing.

Two people can look at the exact same thing and experience it completely differently — because they’re not only seeing the thing itself, they’re seeing it through the lens of their experiences, values, fears, hopes, wounds, and level of awareness.

What We Reach for Tells Us Where We Are

When we’re seeking validation, we might find status and shiny things beautiful. When we’re lonely, we might find attention beautiful. When we’re healing, we might find peace beautiful. When we’re growing, we might find truth beautiful. When we’re grieving, we might find tenderness beautiful. When we’re at peace, we might find the ordinary beautiful. 

What we reach for tells us where we are. As consciousness expands, so does our capacity to perceive beauty. Not because the world changes. Because we do.

The older I get, the more fascinated I become by forms of beauty that would have escaped my attention years ago. A flower is beautiful, but so is the person who waters it every morning. A mountain is beautiful, but so is the courage it took someone to climb it. A perfectly composed photograph is beautiful, but so is the messy, imperfect life happening just outside the frame. A child’s laughter is beautiful, but so is the mother who nurtured it into existence. 

The Beauty We Almost Miss

These days I find myself moved by gentler things.

The beauty of someone admitting they were wrong.

The beauty of a child laughing at bubbles drifting through the air.

The beauty of a friend remembering something small you mentioned months or years ago.

The beauty of a scent that pulls you back somewhere — rain on warm pavement, jasmine on a cool summer night, the perfume your mother used to wear that, for a moment, makes her feel close again.

The beauty of being fully present with another human being without needing to fix them, impress them, or convince them of anything.

These things rarely make magazine covers. Yet they often leave the deepest impression.

Perhaps that’s because beauty begins to look different as awareness deepens. We start by appreciating form. Then we appreciate character. Then we appreciate essence.

At first we fall in love with what shines.

Later we fall in love with what is genuine.

And eventually, if we’re fortunate, we discover that some of the most beautiful people are often the ones who have stopped trying so hard to appear beautiful at all.

“At first we fall in love with what shines. Later, with what is genuine.”

There is something profoundly attractive about authenticity. Not perfection. Not performance. Just the quiet relief of someone being exactly who they are.

The willingness to laugh at yourself. To stay curious. To keep learning. To remain open-hearted despite everything that could have convinced you otherwise.

In many ways, yoga, dance, meditation, self-reflection, travel, nature, meaningful conversations, and simply living have taught me this. Not how to become someone else, but how to see more clearly.

To notice beauty where I once overlooked it. To recognize that life becomes more beautiful when we stop demanding that it look a certain way.

I still love beautiful places, beautiful design, beautiful art, beautiful jewelry, and beautiful food. But I also find myself noticing things I might have missed years ago: a genuine smile, a difficult conversation handled with grace, someone choosing growth over blame, a moment of unexpected kindness, or a person learning to love themselves after years of forgetting how.

The funny thing is that none of these forms of beauty compete with one another. They simply exist on different levels. One doesn’t replace the one before it. It holds it.

Like the petals of a lotus unfolding — each one making room for the next.

Seeing Like a Child Again

And perhaps that’s the real gift of growing older.

Not that beauty disappears. But that we begin seeing it everywhere.

Children know this instinctively. They haven’t yet learned which things are supposed to be worth noticing, so they notice all of it — a bug crawling across the floor, a puddle deep enough to jump in, the moon following them home in the car.

Somewhere along the way most of us trade that wide-open seeing for efficiency, for knowing, for moving on quickly.

A More Beautiful Way of Seeing

The world may not become more beautiful as we move through life. Yet our capacity to perceive beauty can. And perhaps that is what the saying was pointing to all along: the beauty we experience is not found solely in the thing being observed, but also in the consciousness doing the observing.

The object may be ordinary. The seeing is not.

And perhaps that is why some of the wisest people seem to find wonder everywhere. They aren’t necessarily surrounded by more beautiful things than everyone else.

They’ve simply cultivated a more beautiful way of seeing.

One small wonder at a time. 💛

REFLECTION

Wherever you are right now, let’s take a moment to reflect:

“When has something ordinary suddenly looked beautiful to you — and what had shifted inside you to make it so?”

If something here shifted the way you look at things, I’d love to have you along for the journey. Join the newsletter for more honest reflections like this one and if you’re curious about working together or exploring the support I offer, you’re welcome to find out more. 💛