What a great question! In short, according to this list on Quizlet, "writers turn to the essay form when they wish to confront their readers directly with an idea."
What that means is that when we need to make a point or convey an idea very clearly, we often turn to the essay form. It's a way of saying what you think and why; it's a way of raising questions and answering them; it's a way of anticipating how others will react to your ideas and addressing their concerns before they even voice them.
It can also be a way to vent your emotions, make a confession, show your support for a cause, make a prediction or a warning about the future, offer comfort to a group of people, organize your own thinking about an idea and examine it—really, the possibilities are endless.
But the things that every essay has in common are that they express an idea and have a definite audience: a group of people to whom the writer wants to make the message clear.
Essays assigned to students in schools often are quite different from essays written outside of school, in the real world.
The main difference is usually that the school essay is assigned: the student may or may not really care about what they have to write about, and the purpose is often just to prove to the teacher that the student understands the topic. But in the real world, you write an essay only when you've just got to get your idea out there.
If you search Amazon for "essays," you'll find some real-world essay collections that help reveal how compelling, interesting, and lively essays can be, from general topics (such as The Best American Essays of the Century) to the very specific on almost any interest you like (such as The Truth of Buffy: Essays on Fiction Illuminating Reality).
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