What the heck are "humanities," anyway?

I have a bad habit of not asking questions about important things, specifically when I feel like adding any more information to my brain might cause me to lose something useful.  "Yes, I know how to use all the functions of my cell phone, but my children's names?  Couldn't tell ya."  Sometimes it doesn't even occur to me to ask the questions.  I walk by signs and don't read them.  I may or may not briefly peruse instructions before pitching them over my shoulder and digging in to a project.  Not always the best plan.  I'm not sure if it's laziness or lack of caring. More laziness, I think; that sounds more forgivable.  My point in all this - I promise it's coming now - is that I never really thought much about the word "humanities."  I knew that when I had to choose a focus area for the BIS program, Humanities seemed the logical choice.  It's a nice, broad category, and I already had a lot of classes that fit the description.  All I really knew is that "Humanities" includes the classes I enjoy most.  It never occurred to me to think about it any more.
My English Lit class this semester includes a brief history of England relating to the Literature for each time period that we study.  Apparently it was around this time that people in England, influenced by Renaissance thinking elsewhere, decided that training for work in the Church wasn't the only good reason for higher education.  In addition to old favorites like logic, arithmetic, and astronomy, literature began to be seen as important for literacy and for understanding the human condition.  This new focus was referred to as humanism.  Of course humanism and the humanities have evolved greatly since then, and there are a couple of schools of thought pertaining to these topics.  I don't want to get into all that.  If anyone actually reads this (besides the person who already knows a lot more about all this than I ever will) and finds it interesting, I'm sure he or she will research it.  I obviously found it interesting and was thrilled to discover how the chosen focus for my degree program tied into my favorite school subject. 
The lesson in all this?  Don't be such a damn sheep.  Take off the blinders.  Stop going through life just accepting, never asking questions.  It's too easy to get so involved in getting through a project, getting the house clean, all the little details of life that we forget to think about anything else.  It's a lot more fun when you know "the rest of the story" as old Paul Harvey would say.  My last semester - hopefully - of twelve years of college, much of that spent working full-time, and I finally figure that out.  Let's see how long it takes me to implement it.