Gratitude as Vision: Making Beauty Habitual
Let gratitude sharpen your eyes so beauty becomes a habit. — Simone de Beauvoir
Reframing Perception Through Thankfulness
At first glance, the line recasts gratitude from a polite response into a way of seeing. "Sharpen your eyes" suggests training attention; "beauty becomes a habit" hints that perception itself can be cultivated. Though the sentence is a modern paraphrase often attributed to Simone de Beauvoir, it resonates with her existential insistence that we actively choose our stance toward the world (The Ethics of Ambiguity, 1947). Rather than waiting for beauty to strike, we practice noticing it; and in practicing, we subtly become different people. In this light, gratitude is not naivete but disciplined lucidity—an exercise in directing the gaze toward meaning without denying reality’s hardness.
Existential Freedom as Attentional Choice
Building on that, de Beauvoir links freedom to responsibility: we create value through projects and regard for others. Choosing gratitude is a micro-project that resists nihilism by orienting us to what can be affirmed. The gesture echoes her view that becoming is enacted through repeated choices—akin to how The Second Sex (1949) frames identity as lived and constructed. By electing to attend to gifts, however small, we are not escaping ambiguity; we are consenting to it with courage. Thus gratitude is existential, not sentimental: an assertion of agency over where our attention, and therefore our life, will dwell.
Psychology: Gratitude Tunes the Mind
Moreover, contemporary research shows that gratitude reshapes attention. In randomized trials, gratitude journaling increased well-being and prosocial focus (Emmons and McCullough, 2003). Barbara Fredrickson’s broaden-and-build theory (2001) explains why: positive emotions widen perceptual scope, making people more likely to notice connections and opportunities. Related work on savoring shows that naming and lingering on pleasant experiences heightens recall and future sensitivity to them (Bryant and Veroff, 2007). In effect, gratitude trains the brain’s attentional filters, making signals of beauty more salient amid noise. Over time, this learned selectivity feels less like effort and more like how we naturally see.
Habits of Seeing: How Repetition Works
Meanwhile, habit science clarifies the mechanism. William James observed that habit sculpts the nervous system (Principles of Psychology, 1890); modern research echoes him, showing that repeated cues and simple if-then plans automate responses (Gollwitzer, 1999; Wood, 2019). Translate the quote into a loop: cue (a doorway), routine (notice one beautiful detail), reward (a brief lift). Iterated daily, this loop reduces friction until beauty-spotting becomes default. Even small implementations—placing a pen on your pillow to prompt a two-line gratitude note—compound. As habits migrate from effortful choice to effortless bias, the eyes really do sharpen.
Aesthetic Education in Everyday Life
From there, the practice expands into an education of the senses. John Dewey’s Art as Experience (1934) argues that aesthetic perception is not confined to museums; it is a way of undergoing the ordinary so that it becomes meaningful. Iris Murdoch called this moral attention—an "unselfing" that frees us to see what is there (The Sovereignty of Good, 1970). Imagine a commuter who, each morning, names one overlooked beauty: the rough gold on a brick wall, a bus driver’s wave, steam curling from a cup. After weeks, the world has not changed; the gaze has. Beauty becomes less an exception than a rhythm.
Guardrails: Gratitude Without Denial
At the same time, gratitude must not become denial. De Beauvoir insists on lucidity about injustice; to see beauty habitually is not to overlook harm. Viktor Frankl’s notion of tragic optimism—finding meaning without minimizing suffering—offers a helpful balance (Man’s Search for Meaning, 1946). Practically, pair gratitude with truth-telling: acknowledge the hard fact, then name a resource, ally, or moment of relief. This preserves moral clarity while protecting the capacity for joy. In this way, gratitude sharpens the eyes not by blurring pain, but by widening the frame to include reasons to continue.
Practices to Sharpen the Eyes
Finally, translate the idea into simple rituals. Try a three-breath pause before meals: breathe, look, and name two specifics you appreciate. Use an if-then plan: if I unlock my phone, then I will notice one beautiful texture around me. Keep a one-line evening log; once a week, write a gratitude letter, which robustly boosts well-being (Seligman et al., 2005). Add a photo-a-day of something ordinary made striking by light. As these practices accumulate, attention shifts from scanning for lack to scanning for value. And gradually, beauty ceases to be a surprise and becomes a habit.