The most important Person

Long time back, in my 3rd standard I read a story about a wise man, who when asked ‘Who is the most important person in your life?’ says ‘You’. And what he means is that the person I am with right now is the most important person for me at this moment, and he deserves all my attention. And I somehow had internalized this at that age.
But today when the times have changed and we have multiple channels to be in touch with people and there could be multiple people with us at any moment on different channels, who should be the most important person. The thought of writing this piece came from some experiences like you sit down for dinner with people, all or most of you are on phone with someone probably more important than the people on the table, you all finish your dinner and you have not exchanged a single sentence with each other. And whatever the priority of people in your lives the person on the phone takes the priority as that person ends up making a noise through the instrument. And I am not sure if our old etiquette books have been updated to include the new manners with our new toys like phones and laptops.
I feel for a complete conversation there is nothing like sitting with someone and listening not only what the other person says through voice and words but also through the body language and the facial expressions and lot of other things. Talking face to face with someone is such a complete experience, and there is so much communication that happens at multiple levels, that goes on to define the relationship between two people. I also feel that when you have people around you, having long conversations on phone and internet instead with the person who is right there with you should be counted as bad manners, in fact I think it is, its just that I do not see many people doing that.
A counter argument can say that the person the phone is also there with you right now, so should be as important. True, should the person who is physically there with you, with all his spatial presence around you, not be more important than the one who is in one dimension. At times it almost feels like in this era of limited time availability and hence limited time to invest in people and relationships leading to shallow relationships and relationships of convenience, we at times have long tele-conversations in presence of other people only to give a message that you have fulfilling relationships. And this message is not meant only for the other people around you but yourself as well.
At the same time if you observe carefully, people who actually have secure and stable relationships will always be more attentive to the in-person conversations, as they have no messages to give. They enjoy the complete conversations with whoever they are, they would speak, they would listen, they would read and admire the other person. Like the famous song goes ‘ yeh soorat teri meri, mobile library’.