That’s a slice of the old stand-up routine, isn’t it? Where the old man is asked about whether this or that hurts, or whether he can feel such-and-such sensation, and he declares, “At my age, I’m lucky to feel anything at all!”
Life sensations – it is too general a concept to retain any meaningful applicability. Instead, we are merely satisfied with portions and slices – of a cramp that is rubbed away, a paper cut that heals and a sense of love for a child, a hug received or given to placate hurt feelings. But what about the greater sensation of “life” in general – of living daily, of being overwhelmed with awe by that sense of mystery that living in this organic, enlivened world brings to the fore, or at least it did when you were a child, once with dreams and an imagination filled with hope for the future.
There were times when you tingled with excitement for this or that activity; of an anticipatory eagerness that filled your day the very moment you woke up; and the antsy sense that you needed to get to a certain age in order to accomplish this or that, and if not at that age or the age itself passed by without much notice, that there would arrive another milestone but none too quickly because life needed to be lived in the here and now and there was no time to lose.
Somehow, those life sensations became dulled; life itself became a constant struggle, a weight of burden that began to slowly, incrementally and almost imperceptibly deteriorate. Then came the medical condition, and the sense that everything was always going to be a struggle.
Hope for the future is a necessary prerequisite for life sensations in the present, and for Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are daily harassed by their Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service because they suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal position, it may be time to consider filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application.
All Federal Disability Retirement applications are ultimately filed through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, and the waiting time itself is a daunting prospect. But, in order to regain that lost coin of Life’s Sensations, where there is some hope left for a future yet to be secured, it may be time to begin preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, instead of waiting around for the Federal agency or the Postal Service to declare your “worth” by beginning termination proceedings with that same careless and indifferent attitude they have shown since first you began experiencing the life sensation of the medical condition that brought you to this point.
Sincerely,
Robert R. McGill, Esquire
OPM Disability Retirement, Et Cetera… 