Polly Campbell is an editor and speaker specializing in personal development and spiritual topics. In her opinion, we live in a culture of perfection where success, beauty, and power are held in high esteem. The media plays to these values and takes great pleasure in exposing the flaws and failures of those who make mistakes or bad choices and plunge into oblivion.

In contrast, Campbell explains, many ancient cultures appreciated imperfection and saw it as a part of human nature. Living well meant dealing with both successes and failures, strengths and weaknesses. Native Americans weavers always included a flaw in the finished rug as a tribute to the Great Mystery. Practitioners of Wabi Sabi in Japan celebrated things worn down by time, regarding them as objects of beauty even though they were battered and tattered.

We can learn a lesson or two from those who are able to take failure or imperfection as creating an opportunity to do a new thing or head off in a new direction. A bad situation can be a spiritual teacher for us. Throughout the book, Campbell shares spiritual practices which enable us to express our emotions, put our courage to the test, connect with self-compassion, build optimism, relate to the imperfection of others, and live a values-driven life.

There are very few perfect days, and perhaps that's why the creative writer Robert Louis Stevenson once observed: "Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant."