Advertising agencies know well their targeted audience; one need only sit and watch the news, flip through the various channels and recognize that yes, someone has more information about one’s particular household than one would like to share; otherwise, why does the age-group, the likely medical conditions being suffered and the problems statistically encountered seem to fit you?
Then, you search on the computer for a specific product, and suddenly ads appear throughout in the margins of the screen trying to entice you to similar genres of product lines.
Someone is “watching” you; information is being gathered throughout; and all along, it never was the onerous manner in which Orwell’s depiction in his famous novel, 1984 tried to describe and delineate. No, in that novel, the totalitarian nature of the State imposed and prescribed television screens that had a 2-way capacity to watch and observe, and there were microphones planted in strategically-placed areas to listen in on conversations. No such events were needed in modernity.
Instead, we go out and voluntarily buy the devices and bring them into our homes without any State or Regime ordering us to do so. And all in the name of capturing youth. Youth, by the looks of television and Internet ads, seems to be the prevailing impetus for all that everyone does in life. Even the old people look young, younger, or seem to only want to be so. Dating websites are no longer for the young and hopeful; no, they are for the old and retired, and capturing youth is the mainstay of today’s cultural focus.
Perhaps there is nothing wrong with the compulsion of striving towards capturing youth; and whether the cosmetic products advertised or the need to “stay young” in order to enjoy life to its “fullest” (whatever that means), capturing youth is the favorite pastime of everyone everywhere nowadays.
For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition begins to prevent the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, the desire to “capture youth” has a slight twist – for, it is not just the want or motivation to harken back to a “time before” when one was young and carefree; rather, it is a need to capture those days when health was taken for granted and movement free of pain or inner turmoil was the daily routine that needed no greater thought.
Health is a blessing, but we don’t know it until it deteriorates; and medical conditions are a curse, and we just don’t think about it until the time is upon us to consider the future.
Filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, may not ultimately accomplish the goal of capturing youth, and thus may not be of much concern to those “watching you”, but for the unique individual that is the “you” in the privacy of your home and inner reflections, it may be a first step towards securing a future that has become the darker secrets of fear and loathing.
Sincerely,
Robert R. McGill, Esquire
OPM Disability Retirement, Et Cetera… 