Perfect variant.

A retailer of diamonds calls a variation in the crystalline universe of coal a flaw or an imperfection.

A scientist might refer instead to a variation.

What is perfect? Or imperfect? Where did these ideas come from?

I love authors who pay loving tribute to the imperfections of humans.

"And Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human." Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Or,

"Around God's throne there may be choirs and companies of angels, cherubim and seraphim, rising tier above tier, but not for one of them all does the soul cry aloud. Only perhaps for a little human woman full of sin, that it once loved." Olive Schreiner.

I love that we love one another, not in spite of our imperfections, our variations, but because of them. To a mother, the birthmark on her child's fat thigh, an imperfection of pigmentation, is the most beautiful sight in the world. This little flaw sets her child apart from all others. To a woman in love, an angry red scar on her lover is a thing of beauty because it makes him who he is.

Without imperfections, without variations, we would be the same person, multiplied into infinity. Perfect people would be automatons, responding perfectly to one another in the certainty that the response would be reciprocated perfectly. There would be no passionate kisses after passionate arguments. There would be no wiping away of tears, no grins of foolishness.

We are perfect. The inventor of imperfection was mistaken. We were made to be exactly what we are, and we are perfectly made. As perfect as a diamond with a variant of lightning cutting through its brilliance. As perfect as a birthmark. As perfect as a scar.