Breaking the vicious cycle of mental and physical disabilities in the Federal Government workplace and in the U.S. Postal Service
It is a self-evident statement, a tautology of sorts, that seasons come and go; for, by definition (and thus an allegedly a priori statement), a season is that which had something preceding it, changed, and will alter its course into a future one, in a cyclical fashion of interminable regularity. It is the effects upon individuals which often fail to change, as people are not subject to the universal principles of the physical world in the same way as planetary systems and nature’s repetitive elements.
Thus do we include artificial “seasons”, as in the holiday seasons, and wonder why misery and exacerbation of health conditions become magnified during such times. One is “supposed” to be merry during this time; peace and joy are offered as salutations throughout, as if they are laws of the physical universe; and somehow, if one’s emotional content does not match with the requirements of the season, the sense of guilt pervades and overwhelms. It is as if we throw a rock into the air, and expect that it will not fall back down to earth; we expect much, and too much, of ourselves and others.
Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, often “feel” the weight of the seasons. But for them, the change from one into the other is less a difference of degree, and more of substantive loss of rhythmic circularity in a physical world which continues on its rotational axis without caring for the individual.
Federal Disability Retirement is a benefit offered to all Federal and Postal employees who are under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, and allows for the Federal and Postal employee to attain an optional exit from the very circumstances and environment which forces the season of dismay upon the Federal or Postal worker who is beset with a medical condition such that the medical condition prevents one from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s job. It is filed through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.
While it may not release one from the rotational mandates of seasonal imposition, it does allow one to entertain a different future, and one which conveys a sense of hope for the season beyond, and a brighter Spring of one’s life.
Sincerely,
Robert R. McGill, Esquire
OPM Disability Retirement, Et Cetera… 