It all looks so alive. While the large-scale orchestrations and biological systems within and around us are near-perfect,
    working like clockwork in a manner that has been unchanged for millions of years, the tiny little bits themselves aren't
    as perfect, which is not only beautiful in a sense, but is also a testimony to why the systems are "perfect". In other words,
    they work. They work and that's what matters. Such things as the ones I'm about to describe are insignificant on their own,
    yet those are traits of the most important units that make you.
    
    Here I focus on structure in looks and ordering, not structure in it function. The latter is beautifully perfect already, or,
    well, near-perfect. Again, if it didn't work so well, it wouldn't have lasted, and that's an important point, and why
    I want to connect "aliveness" with "imperfection."
	
    Now you're probably confused by the jumble of all the "perfects" and "imperfects" in the above text, but I will clarify what
    I was thinking about a while ago. The systems inside us—think of small ones like cellular functions, and big ones like
    entire organ systems. (I will later touch into a bigger one: organisms themselves and ecosystems.*) I want you to think of
    a microscope image of cells together. You're thinking of it? Good. It doesn't matter what type of cells they are yet.
    I want you to focus on the structure. Due to the nature of how things grow, those aren't geometrically perfect. They're lumpy
    and variant in size, even if subtly. They're in fluid and contain fluid, so their insides move too. When cells split,
    I doubt that they split wholly "perfectly".
	
    (I digress, but maybe they do, since due to how forces work, the mother cell, when squeezing to split, has a tension form in
    the middle, and as it splits, the two resulting parts should be similar in size or volume to maintain enough tension to
    successfully split into two, I believe.)
    
    That aside, my point still stands: the forming cells aren't perfectly circular, or perfectly any shape, for that matter.
	
    To me, their floating, jiggling, and nature are among what makes them look so alive, which they are, of course, but what is
    "aliveness" to us? How do we look at a cow and identify that it is a living creature? Isn't it its little movements, like
    its ears', the warmth of its blood, its heartbeat, its little sounds here and there? That's a living being. Now back to the
    microscopic. Cells that share a function—say, skin cells—are going to work identically. Every cell destined to do
    something is ideally capable and does it, like being able to recieve neurotransmitters, or have the miniscule bits of
    chemicals have an effect on it, such that reactions within it can alter its behaviour. In a cell, there are exchanges going
    on across membranes. There is DNA being copied and packages being transported. If it weren't for the existence of disorders
    that the body cannot deal with, or errors of varying degrees occuring at a cellular level, then this system is perfectly
    and flawlessy functional. And I am going to state that regardless of errors that can and do frequently happen inside, because such
    things are what I percieve as the aliveness of it all. In other words, you are alive because your body is working. Your parts
    are playing their role, and your body is equipped with the ability to deal with things, expected and unexpected.
    
    The final line is crucial, because those who are disabled aren't less (less perfect, less "functional" or less anything).
    They are still alive and their bodies still work enough for them to be alive, not just people but any living thing
    that doesn't match the image of a fully perfect, unrealistically ideal member of its species.
    
    Let's go back to my main topic, which is imperfection in apperance of things that are alive.
    
    What prompted this entire thought process was me thinking about palisade mesophyll, a part of leaf tissue that, when
    viewed in cross-section, has a regular formation of rectangular palisade cells. I was thinking; we call them rectangular
    because that is what they look like, and it's perfectly logical to call them that, but they aren't perfect rectangles.
    They are bumpy and uneven and I doubt they sit together in perfect, even, brick-like alignment.
    
    Because of the way those cells form and grow, they won't look like perfect geometrical shapes, yet the function is there,
    and they can form that orderly structure that they are supposed to form, and work as intended, and I think that's
    beautiful. The same idea applies to the spongy mesophyll, which are like the opposite of the palisade in a way,
    consisting of rounder cells that aren't evenly placed. In fact, there's no rule to the pattern besides the idea
    that the cells should have gaps between them. This doesn't prevent some cells from lumping together, though, as long
    as the necessary vaccuum exists for the structure to perform its duty normally.
    
    This naturally brings us to the next topic: stem cells. Now let's focus on animals again. Stem cells are incredible.
    You start as a little ball of cells, an embryo, yet your "code" "knows" that cells are supposed to be different in
    order to perform different functions, and those cells do "latch" onto their designated functions and grow accordingly.
    Isn't it amazing how cells just "know" that they're supposed to form an ear, and can indeed follow with creating an ear?
    And I mean, an actual ear, one whose outer structure they don't start with and work around, yet create from essentially and
    structurally nothing but the genetic definition of an ear! It works the same for everyone. The ears are similar for all
    humans. They're meant to be, and are programmed to be. How did it come to that, the ability to have an ear that looks like
    that across a species? Yes, evolution, but *how*? I can think of the details of how, from the parts of an ear, since those
    parts each have a reason they're there, and we can trace each to what made them a need, but that's a different topic, and
    you can probably find a decent text on evolution that isn't this ramble.
    
    This is also applied to the fact that we have skeletons. It amazes me how an embryo can grow into a baby with organs
    and a skeleton. Let's take it even further. At some point, life was merely boneless aquatic creatures, yet they eventually
    became creatures of flesh, blood, and bones.
    
    Ears, faces themselves livers, and skeletons, too—none of those are meant to look perfectly even. Your and my liver
    aren't identical. They're the same organ and they work the same, but they wouldn't look exactly the same, and I don't
    think they should. Again, it's the result of how tissue forms: imperfectly! The cells aren't all the exact same shape and size,
    and that combined with them growing over time, forming the organ as they go, relying on a genetic blueprint and not
    some physical outline to build on, will create a liver, which is liver-like in shape and can do the function of a liver.
    That's simply what a liver is, and that's what my cells and your cells have successfully gathered into. Our livers do the
    same thing; we are the same species, and we are both alive. Unless you're reading this in the future, in which case,
    I was alive at some point, and this is proof that I was. Anyway, moving on.
    
    Before I conclude with the biggest point of this passage ("what is aliveness in appearance"), I will explore two
    last examples: offspring of asexual reproduction in plants. The mental image I had was that of succulents or small
    plants with many small thick leaves lined up. While each of those leaves are identical to each other, and the plant
    itself being genetically identical to its parent plant, neither are 100% perfectly identical. The genes are identical,
    but, yet again, it is how those cells form tissues that have these little imperfections which create the life that we see.
    
    The final example is the existence of mathematical patterns in nature. Designs on insects or spirals in the form
    of some plants are technically perfect, but the aliveness factors into this again and produces little imperfections
    in the form of bumps or curves or varied-sized parts in lumps. (A reader added wax honeycombs when discussing this
    and it made me look up images. It's very stunning how perfect they look geometrically, but those too, because of both
    the nature of the matter they're made of and the fact that they were made by living animals, fall victim to the idea
    presented here. You'll have too look closely to see it, though.)
    
    Perhaps inanimate things can look alive as well. What to you, would make a robot look alive? I am thinking of a robot with
    many appendages or arms: a spider-like giant robot (something similar to "can't help myself" by Sun Yuan & Peng Yu. I
    imagine its base to be stationary but it has many arms sticking out, whose movement is anchored to that base). To me,
    a pure mechanical motion that is identical in each movement, predictable and repetitive isn't alive, but it can move in ways
    that make it seem alive. After thinking, I noticed what I'm looking for: what makes a motion look alive? I found it to be
    how it interacts with and is influenced by its surroundings. A robot arm that moves purely based on how it's programmed
    to move is, well, functioning, but it doesn't feel alive in any way. It's a machine. Yet a machine, say the spider-thing,
    moves imperfectly, such as a motion that isn't even or predictable (it stumbles around, hesitates, doesn't move its
    arm for the same distance each time, and so on), can perhaps make me sympathise with a lifeless machine, and even make
    me see it as a very large metal animal.
    
    You were never meant to look perfect. You were meant to be alive. Biologically, your body is perfect enough to keep you alive.
    
    *I ended up not mentioning ecosystems here, but briefly, it was about the sheer diversity of life on Earth, and the
    food chains that dominate the flow of the living part of nature. I don't have anything to say that you can't reach
    yourself, but the key idea is the systems that simply work.