In Plato’s Symposium, it is a Greek term meaning, “in-between”. Above mere beastly and appetitive desires, yet not quite transcending to the angels, we are stuck between lofty thoughts and mundane chores.
What we do in life is a paradigm of anomalies reflecting who we are: the construction worker who comes home and turns on Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony; the merchant who haggles daily in money matters only to spend his weekends in museums and art exhibits; the young man or woman who loves, but dreams of a monastic life of prayer and refection.
Throughout, Man is caught in-between. Perhaps that is how Roman Catholic theology came up with the concept of Purgatory — of that state of being in perpetual hold until the prayers of others releases you from the captivity of your own doing.
For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who 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 your Federal or Postal job, the concept of Metaxu is familiar and intimate: of that “in-between” state of being.
You can’t do your job but you keep struggling to act as if you can. You don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, let alone today or this afternoon.
Contact a retirement lawyer who specializes in OPM Disability Retirement Law and begin the process of releasing yourself from the state of Metaxu — that “in-between” state of perpetual agony.
Sincerely,
Robert R. McGill, Lawyer