I’m fresh back from the Grand Union Canal, and a few days on a barge with family. It was one of those beautifully simple trips. Board games, tiny boat-oven pizzas, no screens (at least for the adults!), just a lot of laughing. And somewhere in the middle of steering through a pitch-black, 40-minute-long canal tunnel (whilst getting drenched by freezing water because I, naturally, decided I didn’t need my waterproofs), my brother-in-law Jeremy and I got into one of those conversations.

The unexpectedly deep kind where you end up talking about what it actually means to be present. And it reminded me of something my dad said towards the end of his life that has stayed with me ever since. He was completely bedbound, hadn’t been out of bed for a couple of years, and when I asked him if he was bored, he looked at me like I’d lost the plot. “Bored? Never.” He explained that he’d often pick a moment from his life, his fighter pilot training in Canada, or when he and my mum first married, or a family holiday, and he’d transport himself right back into it. He could relive every vivid detail because he’d actually been in those moments when they were happening.

And that’s what got me thinking about how we live now. We’ve built an entire culture around not being present. We’re scrolling through other people’s lives, capturing everything on camera, filtering, curating, archiving, doing everything except actually being there as we create the memory. I’m not exempt from this, by the way - I’m recording this podcast in the hope that you’ll stop what you’re doing and give me your attention, so let’s not pretend I’m above it.

But we do get to choose. That’s the point. We get to choose where we place our attention, and right now I think most of us are giving it away without even realising. So this episode is an invitation. Leave your phone in another room for an hour. Eat a meal without a screen. Go for a walk without your headphones in. Because at the end of our lives, it won’t be our follower count or our content archive that’s left. It’ll be what we were paying attention to. The things we loved. The people we loved. Let’s make sure we actually let ourselves know it while we have the chance.

This episode is based on my full Substack essay:

Check out digital home on Substack: ReWild with Gill Moakes

ReWild Your Business is a global top 3% podcast. If this episode resonated with you, please could you leave a review - it means the world.

ReWild With Gill Moakes is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.