A friend came home to Trinidad recently and, as we have done for years, we went to lunch.
Our circle has grown much smaller over the decades. Life has seen to that. Children have grown, careers have unfolded, some friends have moved away, and others have died. That makes these lunches more valuable than they once were. They have become a tradition.
Whenever he visits, we meet. We talk about politics, our children, food, medicine, the state of the country. We revisit old stories, tell the same stale jokes and somehow still laugh at them.
This lunch was different.
While we spoke, he kept reaching for his phone.
Sometimes he checked it absent-mindedly. Sometimes he scrolled while I was talking. Then he would place it on the table, only to pick it up again moments later to show me a photograph connected to whatever he was saying.
At first, I assumed he had important messages to answer. Then I wondered whether he was checking facts because his memory was deteriorating.
But eventually, I realised it was something else.
The phone had become part of the conversation.
In the middle of telling him something I had wanted to share for months, he half-nodded while his eyes remained fixed on the screen and he continued scrolling. He was listening, but he wasn’t really present.
When we said goodbye, I found myself mourning a conversation that never happened.
As we age, conversations become more than an exchange of information. They are acts of remembrance.
When my father died at 97, one tragedy of living such a long life struck me. Every childhood friend was gone. Elder relatives had passed away. Every one of the five chief justices under whom he had served had died.
When the people who shared your memories disappear, part of your own history disappears with them.
That is why old friends matter.
Shared memories awaken forgotten ones. Someone recalls an event you had completely lost. Another remembers a face, a joke or a place that had faded from your mind. Together, you reconstruct a life more accurately than either person could alone.
Reminiscence is not simply nostalgia. It is one of the ways memory survives.
Perhaps that is why I missed the old conversation with my friend so much.
He had not always been like this. Something had changed. But perhaps it is not just him. Something has changed in all of us.
The connectedness of people sharing physical space has diminished. People still fill restaurants, shopping malls and sidewalks, but increasingly they occupy different worlds.
I see it everywhere now—people crossing roads, waiting in lines, sitting together in cafés, all physically present but mentally somewhere else.
MIT sociologist Sherry Turkle suggests that we are not merely addicted to our phones. Rather, we use them to avoid the discomfort of being alone with our thoughts and the unpredictability of genuine human conversation.
The screen has become our escape hatch.
We are technically connected yet increasingly isolated.
Perhaps COVID-19 accelerated this shift. Years of distancing altered our habits. Small talk with strangers, conversations with neighbours, a chat with the postman, or eye contact that becomes a smile seem less common today.
Crime may also have made us more cautious.
Whatever the cause, something feels diminished.
As far back as 1979, Christopher Lasch warned in The Culture of Narcissism that modern society was becoming increasingly self-absorbed, with personal fulfilment replacing community.
Social media has only amplified that tendency.
Political scientist Robert Putnam made a similar argument in Bowling Alone. Communities, he wrote, are built not by grand events but through countless small encounters—shared spaces, repeated conversations and casual interactions between ordinary people.
When those disappear, trust quietly erodes.
Years of living in short-form media have also fractured our attention. Sitting with a complex idea—or a complex person—has become unexpectedly difficult.
We are losing our tolerance for boredom, and with it our capacity to be fully present.
Yet, presence is the foundation of every meaningful relationship.
The more we worry about artificial intelligence becoming too human, the more we ourselves seem to be becoming a little less so.
Community requires showing up.
Empathy requires attention.
Both demand that we occasionally put the phone down.
I still think about the conversation my friend and I never had.
Perhaps next year, when he returns to Trinidad, we will leave our phones in our pockets.
Because at this stage of life, conversations are no longer simply conversations. They are how we keep one another’s memories alive.
