Communication and Cooperation.
One definition of communication is the exchanging or imparting of information. Usually this means between people but not exclusively because we are happy to talk about animals and even plants communicating with each other. I would like to extend the definition to be the exchange of information between entities. The word entity is very useful because it can be anything. Under my definition communication would be the exchange of any form of energy (and therefore information) between entities whether or not they are living things. Thus the sun and the earth communicate with each other because the earth receives the energy of the solar wind and the two entities are linked by gravity. Each derives information from the other.
Electrons protons and neutrons are communicating with each other because they are linked by weak and strong nuclear forces. Quarks communicate with each other in the formation of larger nuclear particles.
Communication leads to cooperation. If we start with the small end of entities - nuclear particles including the Higgs Boson cooperate to allow matter to exist at all. Subatomic particles form the atoms of the hundred odd elements. The elements communicate and cooperate to form molecules within a single element or between elements to form compounds. Over geological time compounds have become more complex with the organic compounds, containing carbon, being the most complex and eventually leading to the first cell. Single cells communicate with others and have even united to appear to be one cell. We know that mitochondria which are the power houses within the modern cell were once free living. Single celled organisms often reach a level of communication that allows them to form colonies such as the ethereally beautiful Volvox. Sponges are a loosely communicating conglomeration of cells cooperating to form a multicellular organism. The cells can be experimentally split apart and they will reunite. The higher organisms such are fish, amphibia, reptiles, birds and mammals are not what they seem. They and we are all collections of cells communicating and cooperating to form the whole. You have more bacterial cells in your makeup than human cells.
The process does not stop there. The 'individual' multicellular organisms such as ants, bees, wasps and termites are so closely communicating within their societies that the term Superorganism has been coined by the renowned entomologist E.O. Wilson to describe the situation. One level up and perhaps the entire earth is a communicating and cooperating organism as suggested by James Lovelock's Gaia theory.
Taking a larger view planets and stars communicate to form planetary systems. Stars cluster to form galaxies. At this point things get a bit big to see what is going on but maybe our universe is but one of many communicating universes.
We are restricted to the view given to us by our instruments such as telescopes and microscopes but there is no reason to suppose that reality does not have entities smaller than the known subatomic and larger than the known universe.
Even if you are not a particle physicist, a cosmologist or an evolutionary biologist reality is fascinating and even for the most knowledgeable largely unknown.