Medical Retirement from USPS or other Federal Agencies: Solomon’s choice

Even in this age of millennial ignorance of ancients, literary or biblical references to arcane metaphors (while taking delight in such useless information as the minutiae of Sanskrit grammar), the general view that King Solomon’s judgment was profoundly wise, is accepted without argument.  Yet, were his assumptions correct, and do they apply today?  Is it presumptively reasonable that love of child would rise above the other emotions felt – of jealousy, perhaps, or envy of the other mother – and declare the truth of the hidden motive?  Is there a priority or order of sequence that necessarily mandates truth to manifest itself, when the choice is one of death, loss, sacrifice and the horror of splitting a baby into two?

Of course, beyond the significance of the epic story itself, is the metaphor we are left with in living our daily lives – of making a choice between honor and its opposite, or of Truth and Falsity; of enduring for the sake of X as opposed to sacrificing in the light of Y.  To embrace a Solomon’s choice is to accept that there is a binary presentation in life’s offerings, and while that is often the appearance of a case, it is the stark reality of the limitations of alternatives available, that makes a decision to be made difficult and unenviable.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who must endure and “deal with” a medical condition, such that the medical condition has come to a point of interference with many of life’s major activities, including employment and performing the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal position, the options presented are often binary, and sometimes adding another to create a trinity of choices.

The Federal or Postal employee can remain and endure; or, if the Federal or Postal employee has met the minimum eligibility requirements (18 months of creditable Federal Service and an evidentiary basis of showing that a medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job), consideration should be given to preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

The “other” choice, of course, is to walk away and do nothing; but that is, in effect, no choice at all, for the time invested and accrued in one’s Federal or Postal career should never be discarded and forgotten, especially when the second option is there to be accessed.

In the end, perhaps Solomon’s choice was, likewise, parallel to that “third” option which resulted in the decisions made, and as a consequence, bore the fruits for the future Trinity.  To split the baby in half could never have been a serious consideration, just like walking away without trying should rarely be considered by a Federal or Postal employee who suffers from a medical condition which prevents him or her from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job.  Solomon’s offer was, of course, a wise one; for, in the end, he knew that such a choice was an untenable one, just as the Federal or Postal employee knows that filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits is the one which will ultimately be the wise one.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement: Faking it

We often judge the complexity and sophistication of a species by evaluating the extent of negative capacities.  Thus are humans considered to be advanced creatures because of the capability of lying, subterfuge, dissimulation, pretense of behavior, and other such undesirable characteristics. But other species can “lie” as well, if one accepts faking matters and circumstances as constituting that sort of advancement of evolutionary behavior.

Predators can “act like” they are asleep, or even dead or noticeably unaware, in order to lure the prey into a somnolence of cautionary approach.  Birds can mimicry others; and chameleons can adapt and change in order to engage in subterfuge.  But the true test of sophisticated advancement is the ability to defy an inevitable reaction to a cause, and to simultaneously suppress it.  As pain is a natural alarm system which the body necessitates a reaction to, so the act of concurrently concealing it requires an enormity of self-discipline rarely found in species other than in humans.

Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition engage in such subterfuge on a regular basis.  Whether in attempting to extend one’s career for a period greater than self-interest, or of necessity to survive among the pack of hyenas comprised of Federal agencies, their cohorts and co-conspirators, the Federal and Postal employee who suffers from a medical condition, such that the medical condition prevents one from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s job, faking it becomes a daily routine requiring self-containment and discipline of an extraordinary capacity.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is an avenue of relief where the threshold and intersection between concealment and level of pain can no longer be tolerated.  It is the exit by which Federal and Postal employees find where once there was none.  For, in the end, the predator wounded and laying in wait for the injurious cause to approach with lesser caution, in order for the prey to become the aggressor, the danger is that one may wait too long and bleed to death, and unknowingly reverse the intended fortunes of the day.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement Lawyer: Catharsis

Medically, it is the process of purgation; in experiential moments of truth and recognition, it is the causal impetus to sudden change or need of change.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, there comes a time when recognition of the linkage between the medical condition and the mandate for change conjoins to create a cathartic moment of realization.

We can fight against it; one can ignore, disregard, suppress or otherwise pretend; but whether one’s imagination and creative cognitive dismissal can continue a fantasy of make-believe, the objective world around us remains steadfast in reminding one that Kant’s bifurcation of the world we live in, like cocoons in a protective shell of discontent, cannot alter the reality of the noumenal reality beyond the cognitive constructs of our own making.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal worker is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is often the first step in recognizing the need for change; and waiting upon a true catharsis will often only result in the self-immolation of destructive purgation — for, by waiting for a crisis-point of that moment where change is necessary, the shock of coalescence where circumstances, the medical condition, and the sudden realization of the true state of affairs come to the fore, may be greater than was ever necessary.

Waiting by ignoring is never a wise decision; procrastination of the inevitable is merely an artificial extension of the coming moment of realization; and in the end, disregarding that which everyone else has implicitly recognized, will only allow for the fate of cathartic gods to send down that bolt of lightening when one least expects it.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire