Beautiful World
When was the last time you stopped and watched a leaf fall?
Especially now, deep in autumn, when the trees are bleeding color - shifting through their final spectrum before surrendering to the ground. Each leaf falls, slowly, hopelessly, until it falls down, turns into a mush of organic matter and becomes part of the soil again.
Forgotten. Absorbed. One with the earth.
Exactly. Why the fuck would you watch a leaf fall? There are thousands of them everywhere you look. Too many to care. We walk past them every day, too caught up in our own heads to notice. Minds running on overdrive, chasing the next big thing, overthinking every little move, and missing the small scenes that make life quietly beautiful. We scroll through our phones, reach for the screen when an opportunity arises, and in doing so, we miss what’s right in front of us - the quiet beauty of things that ask for nothing but our attention.
We often treat the ordinary like it’s invisible, as if it’ll always be there, waiting for when we finally decide to slow down.
But it won’t…
I’m guilty of this too.
There’s an interesting phenomenon that occurs when we change our surroundings - a new town, a new city, a new country. Different people, different light, different air. Suddenly, we notice everything again with fresh eyes. Palm trees, sunsets, white sand beaches, cobblestone streets, the way the air smells after rain - it all feels new. We say “wow, isn’t that beautiful” at things we’d normally ignore.
Funny thing is, we don’t need to fly across the world to feel wonder… It’s already here, hiding in plain sight - in the way light breaks through fog, in the gentle patter of rain on glass, in the soft murmur of the city before it wakes up, and of course, in the silent, hypnotising drift of a falling leaf. We just forget how to see it, because beauty doesn’t live in new places - it lives in a new perspective.
The kind that notices.
The kind that pauses.
The kind that stops, even for a second, to watch a leaf fall.
Take a Moment
In 1946, George Orwell wrote:
“To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.”
Even though it was written nearly eighty years ago, yet his wisdom still applies and it feels as if it was meant for today - a world overflowing with noise, distractions, and endless scrolls. Orwell’s words remind us that truth and beauty aren’t hidden somewhere far away. They’re right here, under our noses - yet somehow, we keep missing them. The quote suggests that in a world full of distractions and complexities, it takes a continuous, deliberate effort to see and understand the obvious truth of a situation.
It’s not just the rare or extraordinary moments that deserve gratitude; it’s being able to notice beauty in literally everything - delicious food in your fridge, the clothes you are able to put on, the shoes that keep your feet warm, the roof that shelters you.
I remember a time when I was working on a project that consumed me completely. The deadline was looming, the pressure mounting, and in my obsession with making it perfect, I lost sight of everything else. I’d skip meals, ignore messages, and rush through days like they were obstacles to get past. I was so focused on the future that I forgot to appreciate the present. I found myself working entire days with minimal breaks, sometimes even late into the night, neglecting the simple pleasures around me, ignoring people that wanted to reach out to me. I would rush through meals, barely tasting the food, and I would barely register the conversations happening around me. It was only after this behavior occurred more than once, when I realised I was so focused on the future that I failed to appreciate the present and missed out on some precious moments.
The struggle to see what was in front of my nose was not a physical one, but a mental and emotional one.
A blindness born out of constant movement.
I don’t know how many quiet moments of beauty and tranquillity I’ve missed in overdrive - but these days, I learned to catch myself. When I feel that pace picking up, I take a breath…
I look around, observe what surrounds me and appreciate it.
I notice.
That simple act of pausing has changed everything. It taught me that mindfulness isn’t some abstract practice; it’s a habit of seeing. Of paying attention. Of realising that life doesn’t need to be extraordinary to be beautiful. This realisation led me to a deeper understanding of the importance of mindfulness and presence. The perpetual awareness of the beauty surrounding me has become a relentless theme in my life, and I simply can’t help but be in awe of the things surrounding me. And of course it’s not just about being aware of our surroundings; it’s about being aware of the people, the moments, and the beauty that are right in front of us.
As cliché as it sounds, gratitude grounds you. It lets you rest in the now - not because everything’s perfect, but because it doesn’t have to be. It’s not about ignoring what’s hard; it’s about balancing it with what’s already good. And if you know me, you know I’m a realist at heart, even though some consider me an optimist - but I am stubborn enough to keep a little optimism alive. Yet I still slip into the same traps, still move too fast sometimes.
But I am getting better at slowing down. At seeing what’s right in front of my nose.
All the Small Things
So yeah, taking a moment for gratitude isn’t just some fluffy self-help trick. It’s one of the few things that actually snaps you back into being alive. It slows you down just enough to notice what’s already happening in your life - all of the details you’d normally bulldoze past - and in that pause, your mind finally gets to rest.
This is something so many of us miss.
We chase, and chase, and chase… and forget to actually live any of it.
Life won’t ever be perfect, but things genuinely shift for the better when we practice gratitude with some level of consistency. It gives you a kind of quiet steadiness. It builds a relationship with yourself that isn’t based on achievement or speed, but on awareness.
And while beauty is deeply personal, there’s still this strange universality to it. Researchers who have interviewed thousands of people and analysed some of the world’s most revered music, art, and architecture, have found patterns in what we have the tendency to call “beautiful”. Understanding those threads woven through the things that move us, gives us a clearer picture of what the brain actually considers beautiful, and how that shapes our thoughts. These universal qualities include simplicity, pattern, rhythm, symmetry, certain juxtapositions of colour, specific combinations of musical notes, and the physical ratios and geometries that appear across cultures.
And now, thanks to neuroscience, we also know a little about what happens inside the brain the moment we perceive beauty!
The Biology of Awe
Neuroscientists have actually looked at what happens in the brain when we see something we call beautiful - whether it’s a sunset, a piece of music, even a face that stands out in a crowd. And the wild part is that our brains light up in the exact same regions that fire when we experience reward or pleasure.
One of those regions is the medial orbitofrontal cortex, which is the same system that reacts when you taste good food, get a warm hug, or hit a goal you’ve been chasing. Another is the striatum, which is tied to reward, judgement, and motivation. In other words, beauty literally plugs into the brain’s “this feels good, pay attention” wiring.
Beauty isn’t just “nice” - it actually shapes behaviour.
It nudges us.
Pulls us closer.
Makes us care.
But the real question is: why?
Why does beauty even matter? Why does a melody, or a face, or the curve of a spiral shell do anything to us at all?
The leading theory is that we’re wired this way on purpose. That long before we had cities, deadlines, Wi-Fi, and burnout, our ancestors survived by recognising certain shapes, patterns, and structures in nature - things like symmetry, fractals, rhythm, and the proportions we now call the Golden Ratio. These patterns helped us spot healthy plants, safe landscapes, fertile partners, and signs of stability.
Beauty wasn’t just “pretty.”
Beauty was information.
A signal.
A clue that whispered, “this is good for you - move toward it.”
And here’s the part that blows my mind:
Even now, in the middle of our concrete, LED-lit, notification-filled lives, the same ancient circuitry is still running in the background. The same neurons that once helped us survive the wild are the ones that light up when sunlight hits a window just right, or when a song cracks your chest open, or when a leaf spirals to the ground.
Your brain is constantly trying to show you beauty.
Most of us are just too busy sprinting to notice.
Slow It Down
Ok, but if beauty is hardwired into us, why does it slip through the cracks so easily? Why do we stop noticing it?
Because our brains are novelty machines - once something becomes familiar, the brain stops burning energy on it. It categorises. Automates. Moves on. That’s great for survival, but terrible for enjoying everyday life.
The brain isn’t built for appreciation - it is built for efficiency.
That’s why the sunset outside your home is invisible, but the same sunset on a holiday becomes a full-blown photoshoot.
Why your own city becomes feels dull, but someone else’s feels magical.
Why you stop noticing the smell of your own house.
Why the leaf falling outside your window barely grabs your attention, until you’re in a new place, standing in a new light, and suddenly that same leaf feels like absolute cinema.
The brain stops noticing the familiar unless we deliberately tell it to look again.
That’s where deliberate gratitude, mindfulness, and presence enter the picture - not as trendy buzzwords, but as tools to wake up circuits that have gone quiet. When you slow down, even just for a minute, something weird happens: the world stops feeling so sharp around the edges, your nervous system shifts, and the noise in the background softens.
Your mind doesn’t race ahead; it stays here, in the moment.
Those tiny pauses - the breath before opening a door, the moment you look out the window, the one second where you actually taste your food - they aren’t “nothing.”
Your brain uses them to recalibrate.
To gather itself.
To rest.
This is why mindfulness and gratitude aren’t clichés - they’re levers. They give your brain a break from constant prediction and planning. They help you inhabit your own life again.
The Novelty Trap
This phenomenon where human brain craves novelty and gets bored fast, neuroscientists call habituation - the brain’s way of filtering out anything that isn’t new, urgent, or dangerous, and this is one of the most basic forms of learning. When you’re repeatedly exposed to a stimulus (a sound, a sight, a smell, a scene), your brain stops responding to it to conserve energy.
Why?
Because the brain assumes:
“This thing is familiar. It’s safe. No need to waste resources.”
This mechanism is well-established in sensory neuroscience and psychology.
And here’s where dopamine enters the picture. Dopamine gets misunderstood as the “pleasure chemical,” but it’s actually the learning, motivation, and “pay attention to this” chemical.
Novel stimuli trigger stronger dopamine responses, because novelty equals potential reward or potential threat.
In evolutionary terms:
New = important.
Old = already assessed.
Your brain literally tags novelty as something worth allocating attention and energy toward.
Layered onto that is the modern neuroscience concept of the brain as a prediction engine. It constantly tries to foresee the next moment to minimise energy use. If something becomes predictable enough, the brain stops “checking” it consciously. This saves cognitive resources, but it also dulls everyday experience.
Your brain treats these as “solved problems” and shifts attention elsewhere. Great for survival. Terrible for really living your life.
To understand why this system runs so deep, let’s go back a few thousand of years, to the times when we used to live in the wild. The same novelty circuitry was signalling the below:
A new plant could be food or poison
A new sound could be prey or predator
A new pattern could indicate danger or opportunity
A new human could be ally or threat
The brain evolved to prioritise the new because the new could save or end your life.
That ancient system still runs today - even if the “threat” is now just your inbox.
This combination of habituation, dopamine-driven novelty seeking, predictive processing, and evolutionary survival wiring explains why the familiar becomes invisible… And why beauty hits harder when we change environments.
This is exactly why practices like mindfulness, presence, and gratitude counteract this effect - they force the brain to pay fresh attention to the familiar. They interrupt the prediction loop. They help you see again.
Let It Land
So after all this - the biology, the neuroscience, the evolution, the habits - it comes down to something unbelievably simple:
You have to let it land.
Literally.
Let the beauty, the meaning, the stillness actually hit you.
Presence isn’t poetic. It’s practical.
It’s how you stop sleepwalking through your own life.
Damn, even 10 seconds of paying attention to the warmth of your mug, a breath reaching alveoli in your lungs, or the pattern of light on your desk, is enough for your brain to finally say:
Oh.
We’re here now.
The key takeaway is that we should not let the pursuit of our goals blind us to the world around us. It’s important to strive for success, but it’s equally important to remember to look around us and appreciate the beauty and opportunities that are already within our reach. In a fast-paced world that often encourages us to look forward, to plan, to execute and to achieve, it’s easy to forget about it. But as Orwell reminds us, seeing what is in front of our noses is a struggle that is worth undertaking.
It’s a timeless reminder to live in the moment, to cherish the now, and to find joy in the everyday.
Because those moments are your life.
So, the next time you find yourself rushing, grinding, spiralling forward into the next task or the next goal - take a moment to pause. Look around you. I promise there’s something beautiful within arm’s reach, hiding in plain sight, waiting to be discovered.
You don’t live in the past, nor the future - put your mind where you are now.
A beautiful day begins with perfect circumstances. It starts with a beautiful mindset - the quiet privilege of being alive, breathing, moving, healthy enough to stand in this world for one more round.
And here’s the truth that sits beneath all of this:
When you learn to notice beauty, you create a buffer against the darker edges of life. You remember that even in a world full of chaos, cruelty, and uncertainty, there are still things worth stopping for. Still things worth fighting for. Still things that remind you that not everything is rotten - not everything is out to break you. Noticing beauty in the world allows you to forget that we are within evil’s reach.
So here’s your challenge:
Today, find one beautiful thing.
Tomorrow, find another.
Keep going.
