On beauty, atmosphere, and why our surroundings shape us more than we realize
For a long time, I thought my attachment to beauty was mostly aesthetic preference. I even felt ashamed of it for much of my life — that beauty was somehow too superficial a pursuit to build an entire career around.
We are taught to treat beauty as decorative. Extra. Nice, but ultimately unserious. Something indulgent to care about after the “important” parts of life are handled.
And yet, I slowly realized some of the most meaningful moments in life are the deeply aesthetic ones.
Why I cared so much about atmosphere. Why certain restaurants made me feel more alive than others. Why walking through Back Bay at dusk could completely shift my mood after a difficult day. Why some homes felt calming almost instantly, while others — even objectively beautiful ones — left me strangely cold.
Over time, I realized it was something deeper than taste.
When I was in college, there was a quote engraved on the side of the art building that I passed almost every day. I remember stopping to read it over and over again because it felt like it was pointing toward something I did not yet fully have language for:
“The goal of the artist is not to solve a question irrefutably, but to force people to love life in all its countless, inexhaustible manifestations.” — Leo Tolstoy
At the time, I think it was the first indication I had that beauty might not be trivial at all.
That perhaps beauty, art, atmosphere, architecture, hospitality — all the things we tend to dismiss as aesthetic concerns — are actually tied to something much deeper: our capacity to feel alive inside our own lives.
There is now an entire field of research called neuroaesthetics dedicated to studying how beauty, environment, art, architecture, texture, light, and spatial experience affect the human brain and nervous system.
In other words: beauty changes us.
Not metaphorically. Biologically.
Which, honestly, felt less surprising to me than validating.
Because I think many people instinctively know this already.
We know certain spaces soften us. We know some homes feel nourishing while others feel emotionally cold, regardless of price point. We know there are restaurants we return to not because the food is objectively the best, but because something about the atmosphere makes life feel more vivid while we are there.
We know certain cities make us feel more connected to ourselves.
We know beauty can feel like relief.
And yet modern life often treats beauty as frivolous. Decorative. Optional. Something extra to care about after the “important” things are handled. We are encouraged to override these instincts entirely in favor of efficiency, optimization, convenience, productivity. We design lives that function beautifully on paper while quietly starving the senses and nervous system underneath them.
I believe almost the opposite.
I think beauty is deeply tied to wellbeing. Not in the performative sense. Not in the luxury-as-status-symbol sense. Not beauty for the algorithm. But in the profoundly human sense.
Beauty as nourishment.
Beauty as a way of loving life more fully.
Ultimately, I think beauty pulls people back into presence.
And increasingly, I think many of us are far more starved for that than we realize.
The question is whether we are paying enough attention to what our environments are doing to us every single day.
Does your home make you feel calmer or more depleted?
Does your city invite you into your life or keep you disconnected from it?
What spaces make you feel most like yourself?
And perhaps most importantly:
What would happen if you stopped treating beauty as frivolous — and started treating it as essential?
