One watches, as a spectator at a sports event, multiple acts by individuals who engage in self-destructive behavior; of youth and potentialities wasted; of depictions of foolish behavior and that which reflects upon the disintegration of society, and perhaps of civilization; and one may ask the perennial question, “Why?”, yet never be capable of embracing an answer with words when language fails to represent reality. One wonders whether it is ultimately an issue of meaning, value and worth.
In an antiseptic society, where the pursuit of happiness is often misinterpreted as the acquisition of possessions, it is easy to lose sight of meaning. Until one is hit with an illness or chronic medical condition. Then, managing the care of one’s medical condition becomes paramount, and suddenly meaning, value and worth come into sharp focus.
In preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, people often fall into one of two categories or classes: Those who were quite content with their lives prior to the medical condition; and those who struggled, and on top of it all, had to deal with a progressively deteriorating medical condition.
Regardless of the ‘prior’ category of life, the medical condition itself becomes the focus of the Federal or Postal employee in the pursuit of a stage of life prior to the impact of that condition upon one’s vocation or ability/inability to perform the essential elements of one’s job. Suddenly, the life ‘before’ was one of meaning, value and worth.
Filing for, and obtaining Federal Disability Retirement benefits from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management allows for one to attain some semblance of the prior life of meaning, worth and value. It is not the Federal or Postal employee who will engage in random and meaningless acts of violence in an attempt to destroy society; they are the ones who are attempting to secure it.
Sincerely,
Robert R. McGill, Esquire
Filed under: Reflections of an OPM Disability Retirement Lawyer | Tagged: accepting opm disability clients all across america, civil service disability, coping with an illness during federal service: living to work, disability retirement at the USPS, federal disability law blog, federal disability retirement and the true meaning of life, federal employees health benefits program, FERS medical retirement, fighting feelings of worthlessness during the opm disability application, if your health is more important than your job, injured federal employees' dilemmas - money or health?, is the future of your health and finances worthy to fight for?, law firm representing clients in opm disability law all across america, life without leisure benefits from the perspective of a disabled federal worker, living life with purpose even with a not perfect health, living with a deteriorating living condition and the injured postal worker, meaning of live, opm disability and living in an imperfect world, opm disability: it's all about your good health, owcp disability retirement, postal service disability retirement, postal worker's struggle to maintain a life with disabilities, resources for injured federal workers, the decision-making process prior opm disability filing, the meaning of leisure for many federal and usps disability retirement applicants, the us government employee and living with a disability, the value of good health and the meaning of life for a federal employee, the value of health is appreciated more after a disability, USPS disability retirement, value of a human being not defined by disabilities, what's more important for the injured postal worker money or good health? |
I found this very truthful; very much a reality. Some of that reality is very frightning; everyone likes to think they are making a difference
and all of a sudden the struggle with the disability at one’s job is over without one wishing it to be so. It has been one month that I was terminated. It seems like years ago when I worked at doing something I had wished for all my life. It is hard to get past this feeling even having so much to do with gathering info and the filing of forms.