Here are some interesting things that particles do:
They interact with each other and become bonded by the strong nuclear force to become neutrons and protons.
They get bound together and form atoms, which form chemicals.
They create life, create minds and thoughts and conversations. They create music, movies, paintings and arguments. Laws, sex, fear, wonder, boredom. Chickens and space ships, crack cocaine and ibuprofen. War, hunger, mass exinction events, telescopes, microscopes.
All these things are some of the things particles do when they interact with each other governed by the laws of physics.
Every thought you have is instantiated by movements at the subatomic level, interacting with one another and rippling all the way up to an intelligent thought. If you practice mediation you are aware you don't control your thoughts, they just arise from subatomic space. It feels like we're thinking ourselves, but the brain is really just a thought engine build by the laws of physics and powered by energy. Our conicousness is just a more complex version of a random number generator.