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+    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.