“Wish you were here” means a lot less when you weren’t fully there either.

Wishing somebody were somewhere only means something if you were there yourself. A night spent half in the room and half on a screen is not a night you can sincerely invite anybody into, and the sentiment turns into a formula you send out of habit. Attention is what makes a place worth sharing. Being absent is not only a matter of distance.

Choose one gathering this week and be completely in it, phone away, start to finish. Then, if you still wish somebody had been there, tell them in detail what they missed. That is the version worth sending.