[ESSAY]Human Characteristics

What makes a human a human? Intelligence? Two legs? What separates us from animals and plants? I believe that the answer lies in a combination of various characteristics, rather than just one single characteristic that defines all of humanity. People are complicated and it will probably take more than just one characteristic to completely represent the entire human race. For example, a few traits that I think are important are our creations and our capability to do other things in life to become more advanced than other creatures. Being able to have imagination, to wonder, and to love and feel, plays a key part in one’s daily life style as well. Generally speaking, there is no singular definition of a human being.

One definitive trait of a person is living. Excluding domesticated animals, most living creatures' only goal in their lives is to get food to survive long enough to reproduce. Although we started out like that, humans have moved on to greater things. While some are accidents, people may choose to reproduce to feel the emotions and rewards of having a child or two, instead of just guaranteeing our survival population-wise. We lived past the point where the only goal was to survive and have formed civilizations, governments, science, and so much more. We have education and medicine and have done things marking us "better" than other animals, going beyond just trying to acquire the basic needs to survive. Humans have the power of choice, of free will, rather than being caged constantly on the goal of receiving enough food or fleeing from predators. We have proven to be unique in the sense of freedom of choice.

The second characteristic is our ability to create and imagine. Creating objects by putting several different materials together plays a big part in advancing human civilizations across the world. Cities and buildings and other structures have been constructed all over the world by humans and have been unique to humanity. Art, music, culture, philosophy, and other things have all been created by someone’s inspiration to do great things. While other animals may have built things, their constructs have not been nearly as complex or detailed as humans. Cars, phones, computers, and other forms of technology have all been a result of advancements and achievements in science and research. These advancements and breakthroughs may have helped improve society through imagining. People are able to create buildings and ideas through imagination. It gives people the ability to come up with ideas and invent new ways to improve conditions of living for people. It plays the role of a catalyst for people to invent and create things beneficial towards their interests. Predictions are based on imagining what will happen next or what will the next move be, which could be a turning point in war or in a competitive activity such as sports. Religion has part of its origins from a group of curious people wondering where had they come from and they had used their imagination to come up with a extensive explanation that ended up in having a large part of the population believing in it. Our imaginative nature allows us to wonder where our origins are from, as it also allows us to come up with different philosophies and life styles. In the end, our innovation and imagination have a large role in the development of human society.

Love determines how a person treats other people around them.  It is a very important emotion of the human nature. While there is definitely love between animals in the wild, love, for humans, can be expressed in so many different ways than just physical contact. One’s affection for another would change their behavior, possibly making them more kind or cruel and may change the way they think or act. It also opens the door for many other emotions such as sadness and pain. Losing a loved one is painful and could very easily damage someone who is close to that person. It may take time to recover, and sometimes people never do. Sadness is never pleasant. There is an opposite of everything in the universe, and in this case, the opposite is hate. Love and hate go together and can easily be interchanged very quickly. Part of love is based on trust, and if that trust is violated and broken, a person could learn to hate someone close to them just as much as they loved them, and can even learn to do both at the same time. Love makes someone capable of doing great things, as hate makes one capable of evil. Love branches out toward a variety of things, including illness. There is a disease by the name of Heart Broken Syndrome that has been officially recognized by many doctors as a legitimate illness. The act of losing something may be more irritating and painful than what it is actually worth, that some people find it very difficult and frustrating to cope with. It may drive people toward insanity unless they find something else to distract themselves with until the solution of the problem is presented.

The human race has advanced forward over the ages. We survived for a long time, though not as long as others. With time, creatures are supposedly inclined to move forward. Yet the human race managed to develop farther than any other creature, making progress in technology, science, literature, and much more. What defines a person cannot be kept to a single word. People are open ended and should not have to be required to be kept in a tiny box of classification. Identifying humans is not simple, whether it is good or bad, smart or dumb, or otherwise, but I believe everyone should have a choice to decide on their personality, and that makes them who they are. The fact that people have this choice makes them human, which also means they are not perfect and are prone to make mistakes early on in their life.