Life is a MasterCard ad

Someone tried to sell me insurance today. I get very uncomfortable when an acquaintance gives me a sales pitch for something I have no intention of buying. I nod my head while she’s talking but all the while inside my head I’m formulating polite ways of saying, “No thanks, I’d rather spend the money on a vacation, preferably in a place with no pushy salespeople.” It’s always easy to brush off someone you don’t know, but you can’t tell a friend of your parents to sod off, can you?

While “listening” to the sales talk about how my important it is to have myself insured, I got to thinking, how much is my life worth exactly? Can you put a price tag on someone’s life? Who’s to say I am worth several thousand pesos more than the next person? Sure, I don’t tame circus animals or clean the windows of Makati skyscrapers for a living, but that’s not to say a lion-tamer or a window-washer’s life is not as valuable as mine (the insurance company merely refuses to risk as much money on theirs).

Certainly we can’t assign monetary amounts to individual lives (who was it that said that if you bottle up all the chemical components of the human body, it would come pretty cheap?). Personally, I prefer to measure my life in terms of years than pesos. The insurance agent said that the average person lives up to 65. I tried taking stock of the years I’ve lived so far and what I’ve done with them, and here’s what I came up with:

1 year of nursery in Mother Goose (the Age of Innocence)
2 years of kindergarten in Uno (the beginning of the Reign of Terror)
6 years of grade school in Uno (the Dark Ages)
4 years of high school in Jubilee (the Renaissance)
4 years of college in Ateneo (the Age of Enlightenment)
9 months as a Management Associate in Philamlife (the Age of Exploration)
7 months as a foreign student in Beijing (the Restoration Period)
2 years as a high school English teacher in ICA (the Golden Years)
3 months as Assistant Vice President of our family corporation (the Age of Reason)
Total: 24 and a half years

So what are those 24 and a half years worth? I like how the song from the musical Rent puts it: measure a year in seasons of love. If we apply that, then my life is actually worth quite a bundle, if my family, friends and students have anything to say about it. And I expect it to appreciate even further over the next 40 and a half years. Try putting a premium on that.