There is a term from workplace psychology that has quietly escaped from the office and subtly colonised the rest of our lives. ‘Presenteeism’ was coined to describe the phenomenon of showing up to work while too ill, distracted or disengaged to function at our best – physically in the room, but mentally somewhere else entirely. It was meant as a warning about lost productivity, but has become, unintentionally, a description of modern life itself.

We are a generation of the physically present and the mentally absent. Parents sit at kitchen tables with their children while scrolling through emails, couples share meals in near silence, each illuminated by the glow of a separate screen, and commuters pass through landscapes with their faces turned downwards. We are, in the most literal sense, elsewhere – even when we are here.