What Does It Mean to Be an Individual?

I am afraid that this is more a long question rather than an answer. What exactly does it mean to be an individual? Or are we even individuals? I suppose what is meant when we say we are individual is that we have individual thoughts, as really our actions throughout our life are far from individual or unique. They may seem to be but really they are not. If this is true though then we rarely get our individualism out, if what is seen is not individual.

We think ourselves more individual than say an ant, but then is it possible for their to be a thing that would class itself as more individual than us, and if so in what ways would that thing be different and what would make it more individual?

I said previously that maybe only our thoughts are individual, but does this even hold to be true? Our thoughts are there usually to fulfil a certain action, even if the most silly action. Take for example a fear of spiders as a thought. I suppose this isn't exactly silly but it does fulfil the action of protecting someone from what they see as a danger. Our thoughts may be slightly different and so too are our personalities, but really don't they seem to fulfil the same task, the highest up being to survive. Obviously this is taking a broad view, but since our thoughts lead to generally the same goal, then is it only the slight difference in thoughts to achieve the goal that make us individual, and if so, are we really that individual since ultimately our "individual" thoughts lead to the same thing?

Since it is our actions that let us interact with others, such as in sports or other things, maybe it is that our individual side is alone, being away from others and only in our own thoughts. This may not be totally true since one can share their thoughts, but looked upon from higher up, say from a worldly view, then this is only the sharing of opinion, with many different means reaching the same end; growing closer to the other person through interaction and the show of individualism. Another example of such a thing is any type of art, be it music, painting, poetry or any other type. These kind of things are regarded by some to be the greatest show of one's individuality as they may think that each brush stroke in a painting shows some of your personality. This is, I suppose, true that some of your individuality is shown in a piece of art, but even combined the piece can only show the tiniest glimpse of one's personality. This can be compared to a photograph of anything, the photograph shows a glimpse, in other words the blatantly visible, but does not show the surroundings, it does not show every single detail of what is there at the time.

With the end result of our actions and thoughts being far from individual, is it only in the small part between the start and end of actions that we can show our individuality and sometimes