This month's Garden & Gun (by far my favorite magazine) has a profile piece on Capers Cauthen, a furniture craftsman based in South Carolina (link not available). He's known for making fantastic tables and other items out of reclaimed wood. In the middle of the article, Cauthen said why he likes working with old wood:
Those imperfections are where the beauty lies.
Truth from a carpenter.
That thing you hate about yourself? That part of you that you think is ugly, useless, outdated, or less than fantastic? Look again. There is beauty there.
The things we don't like about ourselves can often become the things others adore. Beauty is firmly in the eyes of the beholder; let someone else find the beauty within you, draw it out, and make something fantastic out of what you once thought wasn't good for much.
Something is not beautiful because it's perfect. It becomes perfect for us once we realize it's beautiful.