What's with that NY Life ad???

NY Life is an insurance company. They're a big one. They may well be a good one. For one company I worked for, they were a BIG client, and the people who worked there were very nice. They also had an extremely cool HQ building in Manhattan, and I was delighted that I got to go there a couple of times. The building was designed by Cass Gilbert, who also gave us the Woolworth Building. What's not to love?

Did I say love? Maybe I meant more like like.

After all, love is how you feel about your family (storge), your friends (philia), your lover (eros), and humankind (agápē, which is all entwined with love of God). Got that? 

What's this got to do with NY Life, you may well be asking yourself.

Good question.

If you didn't watch the Super Bowl, you may have missed it, but NY Life is running an ad about their agápē-ness.

Silly me. Here I was thinking that were about selling insurance, but, nope: it's been 175 YEARS OF HELPING PEOPLE ACT ON THEIR LOVE, and that love that they help people act on is the:

...one love that stands out above the rest. Selfless love. It’s called agápē (ah-gah-peh) — love as an action. Agápē is what inspires us to put others' needs before our own. It's about doing what's right, being our best selves, and building better futures.

Well, sure, you probably don't buy life insurance if you aren't concerned about what happens to your spouse and kids if you die in your earning prime. But there are plenty of people who love selflessly - love their families, friends, lovers and others, but who can't afford insurance premiums. And plenty of crappy peple who can.

So, with respect to this ad, I have to ask the Tina Turner question: what's love got to do with it, do with it? 

I am having technicolor, 3D flashbacks to being at an all-girl Catholic high school in the 1960's.

We were all about agápē. We hung felt posters in our homerooms - doves, flowers, crosses, agápē spelled out in a weird felt font of our own making.

We went to the Saturday Midnight Folk Mass at Holy Cross, where we sang Paul Quinlan folk songs and listened to some Jesuit talk about agápē. Or we hung out at Limbo, the Holy Cross coffee house, and talked agápē.

We swooned about God's love, probably because none of us had boyfriends (or girlfriends, for that matter) to swoon over.

We read C.S. Lewis.

Our yearbook was called "Everyman," because back then, no one worried about inclusive language, and everyman, mankind, etc. were considered universal, inclusive terms. (Our school song - words written by my classmate and still friend Kathleen to the tune of The Boys from Wexford -  because JFK's ancestors were from County Wexford, and before he was assassinated our freshman year, we swooned over JFK - included lines like:

In union is the strength of man, in union is our goal.To light the light of brotherhood, in each and every human soul.

The sisterhood was on the verge of getting powerful, but it never occurred to us that "sisterhood" might have been more appropriate for an all-girls school.

We actually wanted to call our yearbook "Fat Lady." Because, while we may have read (or tried to read) C.S. Lewis, we gobbled up J.D. Salinger. Who told us (in the person of Seymour Glass, channeled by Buddy Glass - or was it Zooey - that we were supposed to do it - pay attention, be kind, shine our shoes - for the Fat Lady. And we wanted our yearbook dedication to quote from Salinger's Franny & Zooey.

"...There isn't anyone who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. Don't you know that? Don't you know that goddam secret yet? And don't you know - listen to me, now - don't you know who that Fat Lady really is? Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It's Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy."

It almost goes without saying that the nuns didn't allow us to name the  yearbook "Fat Lady." Alumnae, they told us. Our parents. Wouldn't get it. Nor did they let us include that dedication. ("Goddam"? In the Notre Dame Academy yearbook? Hell, no.)

So we watered it down:

Do it for Everyman. Search for Christ in him. Possess the insight to realize the immortal soul of humanity. Contact your brothers with undersanding, whic is to stand under, which is to look up to, which is a wonderful way to understand. Be one with yourself, one with your brothers, one with your God. Do it for Everyman.

"Don't you know it, Buddy, don't you know that secret yet? Everyman is Christ."

And, yes, we did put quotes around what wasn't a quote from J.D. Salinger but a paraphrase. No goddam, no Fat Lady for the girls of Notre Dame Academy, even though one of the lines in our school song (since replaced, I note sadly) was "We girls of Notre Dame Academy, behind the truth do stand." Well, yes and no.

No need to mention - but I will anyway - that I was on the yearbook staff. The yearbook was edited by my classmate (and still friend) Kathleen. My closest high school (and beyond) friend, Marie, was an assistant editor. 

I did pull it out my yearbook out in 2017, when I went to our 50th reunion. (More than sadly, Marie had died in 2014.) But I really hadn't thought of the Fat Lady thing in ages.

We spent those high school years, all in an agápē swirl. (Even though half of us had one particular Peanuts cartoon thumb-tacked to the cork bullletin board in our bedrooms. The immortal words of Linus Van Pelt: I love mankind. It's people I can't stand.)

Bottom line: I find the NY Life ad plenty dopey. Even dopier, for some reason, than the Subaru ads that tell us that love is what makes a Subaru a Subaru. Proably because Subaru uses a lot of cutie-pie golden retrievers in their ads. And NY Life just uses plain old humans. (I love mankind. It's people I can't stand.)

I don't think I'd find the add so offputting if it weren't for the agápē throw in. Maybe if they just stuck with plain old love. 

Anyway, I come away from that NY Life ad shaking my head, agape at agápē. Agápē? Seriously?