"Have You Eaten?" ... One Day, We'll Miss Even That Call [Words from Back Then]

[Financial News]  7:30 p.m. After a full day of work, you drag your exhausted body onto the subway on your way home.
Then your cellphone rings. At the sight of the two-character name meaning "Father" on the screen, fatigue hits before any sense of gladness.
"Should I answer, or call back later?" Using tomorrow's work and the pile of chores at home as excuses, we often hesitate to answer our parents' calls.
Even when we finally answer, the conversation is brief. Have you eaten? Is everything all right at work? The same questions, over and over. To their children, it's a tiresome conversation they've already heard the day before, but it may be different for their parents. Those few brief words may be the moment they've looked forward to most all day.

As parents and children grow older, their lives move at different speeds. A child's day is nonstop, filled with work and raising children, while news from their children takes up an overwhelming share of retired parents' daily lives.
It was the other way around when we were young. When we came home from school, we would pour out everything—from arguments with friends to what we'd had for lunch—and our parents would listen, no matter how busy they were. But years later, their grown children find even the brief conversations their parents long for burdensome. It's not that their love has faded; life has simply become busier. The problem is that we take that busyness for granted for far too long.

We often underestimate the value of reaching out first.
According to an experiment conducted in 2022 by a research team led by Professor Peggy Liu of the University of Pittsburgh in the United States, involving more than 5,900 people, people consistently underestimated how much joy their messages would bring to others. The more unexpected the contact, in particular, the more grateful recipients felt.
This isn't just true of friends or acquaintances. Even a brief phone call we might think nothing of, or an ordinary check-in like "Everything all right?", can hold a powerful ability to brighten someone's day.

There's no need to feel ashamed if your parents' calls feel bothersome.
Everyone has exhausting evenings when they just want to rest alone. But one thing is clear: the everyday life we take for granted now won't last forever.
The names "Father" and "Mother" saved in your cellphone. Even those numbers, which seem as if they'll connect whenever you press them, can't escape the passage of time. Calls from parents gradually become less frequent, and eventually comes a time when their children have to be the ones to check in first.
And one day, no matter how urgently you call, the time will come when you can no longer hear that familiar voice.
What we'll miss most then won't be grand family trips or gifts. We may ache for those ordinary, tiresome words repeated over and over: "Have you eaten?" and "Stay healthy." The memories that last longest are of the words we heard so often that we never realized how precious they were.

Today, too, countless people finish an exhausting day and head home. What if, amid that hurried walk, you took out your cellphone for just a moment?
There's no need for a big conversation. "Dad, have you had dinner?" "Mom, everything all right?" A single sentence is enough.
There may be no reason it has to be today, but there's no reason to put it off until tomorrow either. We always regret the last goodbye we didn't manage to say properly, but no one knows when that last moment will come.
Fortunately, we can hear today the voice we'll one day long to hear more than anything. That's reason enough to call right now.
[email protected] Jeon Sang-il Reporter