We are animals, and like animals, we approach life instinctively.  If it’s cold, I seek shelter.  If I fall, I extend my hand to protect my face.  If you hurt me, I retaliate.  This instinct is hardwired into our evolution—it’s about survival of the fittest. 
Yet, we like to think humans are different from other animals. If it isn’t our instinctive behaviour that sets us apart, then what does? 

Some suggest our advanced intelligence marks our uniqueness. But intelligence exists on a spectrum – octopuses make tools, rats learn to navigate complex mazes, and some claim dolphins are even more intelligent than we are. 

If not the quantity of intelligence, then maybe it’s the type of intelligence—our capacity to think critically, solve problems, form judgments, and make logical decisions.  Still, here too, other creatures are capable of reasoning; turns out, ravens can manipulate their environments, and apes can too.

So what truly sets us apart from other animals, if it’s not our intelligence or reasoning ability? For me, the answer is clear: it’s our obsession with swimming upstream against the evolutionary tide. While most animals instinctively follow their natural path and flow with the current of evolution, we have an intense desire to rise above our instincts. I swim to escape the matrix in which I feel trapped.

I sincerely hope the matrix is not like a rat race orchestrated by an evil scientist who gleefully wrings his hands as he sets us off through a maze to nowhere.  Nonetheless, I can’t shake the feeling I’m strapped into something I’d rather not be bound to.  It’s not a maze; it’s more like a rollercoaster.

I could simply relax and let the rollercoaster follow its track, allowing it to do what it was designed to do.  That is to say, I could allow my instincts dictate my behaviour and go with the flow, just as animals instinctively do.  Yet, I resist while other animals don’t.  It’s a distinctly human characteristic.  Something distinctly human within me is suggesting that a fulfilled life cannot be achieved solely by animal instinct; it must be guided by something else—something counter-evolutionary.  I call it grace.