Tens of thousands of years ago, our ancestors wandered the African plains as hunter/gatherers. That's our genetic heritage. We didn't have cities, or agriculture (the two go hand in hand), we just moved from place to place, following our food sources and trying to avoid being eaten.
Something interesting happened. Unlike other pack animals, humans (such as they were) developed the ability to envision what-if scenarios.
You sometimes see the origins of this in trained animals - the conditioned response to recognized stimuli. The Pavlov's Dog effect. But our ancestors took this to a whole new level. Instead of conditioning themselves to things that had actually happened, they developed the unique ability to construct a mental model of an event that might happen. This gave humans a tactical advantage, as they were able to formulate a story - a hypothesis if you wish - and then take actions based on that story.
This level of sophisticated mental modelling is what we today label as...thoughts.
It's hard, because we tend to identify with our thoughts. But if you understand that all the stories that pass through your mind are just elaborations of the fundamental what-if analysis that humans developed, you realize that they are, rather, add-ons. Like add-ons to a software program. Underneath it all lies a core of awareness that is not the same as these thoughts - but that's a koan for another day.
Anyway, civilization is this facility gone wild. Today, we live in a world where these thought-models are often treated as more significant than what actually goes on in the world around us. We "live in our thoughts". And most of our entertainment - TV, books, movies - is all about leveraging this model-making for enjoyment rather than survival. Our thoughts have become more "real" to us than the World. And then we use these thoughts to coerce the real world into conformance. Sometimes this is useful. Sometimes this is destructive.
Just be aware. Try to remember that those thoughts you have are just hyperactive what-if scenarios running through your brain.
Stop.
Look.
Listen to the World.
