The Power of the Unspectacular

Charlotte, NC

Finding Beauty in Ordinary Places

What if we understood the phrase "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" as an invitation to experience beauty within unlikely places?

Consider this: beauty might not be a fixed quality of an object or place, but an experience that arises within us. And if that's the case, our capacity to experience beauty—really experience it—is something we can cultivate. Not through more travel or better aesthetics, but through attention itself.

Imagine walking down an ordinary street and feeling a quiet sense of wonder. You notice a brick that has been weathered by time. An ice cream cone dropped and abandoned an hour ago, dissolving its form by the minute. The reflection of a telephone pole layered with work-for-hire signs in a rain-slicked puddle. A storefront window advertising custom wigs with total sincerity. None of this is remarkable in the usual sense. And yet, under the right internal conditions, it can stop you in your tracks.

This kind of seeing doesn't come naturally. It has to be learned.

There are places that almost everyone agrees are beautiful: mountains, beaches, the culturally agreed-upon beautiful human. This kind of beauty is easy, or should I say easier to experience. It doesn't require attention. We barely need to show up for it to register. But there is another space—far more demanding and far more meaningful—where the experience of beauty requires us to change our internal state. To slow down. To focus. To soften the gaze. To stay with what is right in front of us longer than feels efficient.

When we do, something shifts. Our range of what we experience as beautiful expands, and with it, our way of relating to life itself.

This isn't just a poetic idea—it's supported by neuroscience.

Research in neuroaesthetics, led by scholars such as Semir Zeki at University College London and Anjan Chatterjee at the University of Pennsylvania, suggests that beauty is not merely detected by the brain but constructed through how we process and value experience. Brain-imaging studies show that when people report something as beautiful, activity increases in regions involved in reward, valuation, and emotional meaning—especially in a medial frontal area called the medial orbitofrontal cortex. Similar valuation signals have been observed for different kinds of stimuli, from paintings and music to faces and even mathematical expressions, suggesting that beauty engages a shared neural currency of subjective value rather than any single visual feature. In this view, beauty depends less on fixed properties of the object and more on how perception, emotion, memory, and context are integrated within an individual brain.

Within this framework, attention becomes the practical hinge: what we attend to gains detail, depth, and emotional weight, while what we ignore fades into the background. Repeated, focused engagement can sharpen perceptual and attentional circuits, so that what once seemed ordinary begins to feel alive—not because the world has changed, but because our ways of seeing have been trained. Photographers cultivate this training through their work; over time, they do more than record appearances—they refine their capacity to feel the significance of a scene. At its best, this practice discloses something remarkable: a beautiful moment that exists only because attention made it possible.

Once this way of seeing takes hold, it's difficult to turn off. The ordinary refuses to stay ordinary.

San Francisco, CA

Modern life, however, trains us in the opposite direction.

Speed, distraction, and constant stimulation push the mind toward efficiency rather than depth. When attention is fragmented, the brain defaults to categorizing and dismissing: seen it, done it, moving on. Neurologically, this is useful. Aesthetically—and existentially—it's devastating. We don't stop seeing the world; we stop feeling it.

This is why learning to see the unspectacular feels countercultural. Slowing down feels unproductive. Lingering feels indulgent. And yet, this internal shift is precisely what allows beauty to arise in places that don't announce themselves as worthy of admiration.

Beauty may feel objective because patterns emerge—many people agree on what is beautiful. But neuroscience and lived experience suggest something quieter and more demanding: beauty is an arising, shaped by attention, presence, and openness. When we change our internal state, the world responds—not by becoming more beautiful, but by revealing what was always there.

And this is where the unspectacular waits.

Petaluma, CA

A Daily Practice for Training the Eye to See Beauty

This way of seeing doesn't require special talent or artistic ambition. It requires intention.

Here are five simple, practical ways to begin cultivating it:

Choose One Ordinary Place Each Day

A sidewalk, a parking lot, a stairwell, a park bench. Commit to staying with it for 20 minutes.

Slow the Body First

Before looking for beauty, slow your breathing. Drop your shoulders. Let your nervous system settle. Perception follows physiology.

Soften the Gaze

Instead of scanning for what stands out, let your eyes rest. Notice light, shadow, texture, color, and relationship rather than objects.

Name What You Feel, Not What You See

Ask: What does this evoke? What does this remind me of? What does this feel like in my body? Beauty often arrives through sensation before thought.

Leave Without Capturing

Resist the urge to photograph or document immediately. Let the moment belong to attention alone. Trust that what matters will stay with you.

Practiced daily, this way of seeing reshapes not only what you notice, but how you inhabit your life.

You don't need more spectacular places.

You need a different way of arriving.

Port Costa, CA