FERS Medical Retirement from the OPM: The wasted life

Perception is one thing; reality is quite another.  Plato’s entire compendium of works can be reduced to the essence of that thought: The worth of life’s goal is to embrace pure Being, the reality that surrounds, and to distinguish between appearance and truth; the allegory of the Cave; the arguments with Thrasymachus; the diatribes against the poets — the latter, because they distort perception and create myths by which people live for and believe in.

Some would argue that the starkness of reality cannot be the sole arbiter of life’s value; that poetry adds to the worth of life, even if misperception of Being dominates.  What is a life’s value, and how is it determined?  Who considers that a life is wasted, and by what standard do we judge?

In the Allegory of the Cave — when the man who frees himself from the shackles of misperception climbs up and sees the sunlight: What if he desires to go back into the darkness of untruth, precisely because the unreality of the world is preferable to the pureness of Being?  And how much of convention and human folly attaches upon the judgment of worth?

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, the judgment of others in determining the valuation of one’s life often gets in the way of doing that which is “best” for one’s circumstances.

Yes, career and continuation in a secure, stable job is important; and, yes, financial stability for the future is an important consideration in the decision-making process.  But so is health and the balance of one’s life.

When health becomes a concern where there arises an incompatibility between work and well-being, the latter must always be chosen as a priority over the former.  And while others may judge that an interruption of a promising career constitutes the wasted life, such conclusions are made by those who, like the unfettered encounter of the man in the Allegory of the Cave who sees the pure Being of reality by looking up at the sunlight, it is the blinding darkness of ignorance that follows which makes for poor judgment and lack of insight into another’s life.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Medical Retirement Legal Representation: “It would happen, anyway…”

This can be a catch-all excuse, of course.  Fatalism is a self-contradictory philosophical perspective; one cannot by definition remain in such a belief-system without experiencing the self-immolation of one’s own convictions.  What if we prefaced each and every one of our actions with such a statement. “It would happen, anyway.”

The operative principle falls behind the “It”, of course, and the remainder of the fatalism makes sense when once we identify the opening dummy subject that is otherwise left unstated, as a pronoun that remains unattended, often purposefully.  The “It”, of course, can mean many things, including: death; failure; a disastrous outcome; complete destruction, etc.

To conclude that X would happen regardless of the causal interventions of human resolve perpetuated by the will of a conscious mind, is to attribute to the universe a determinism that is without design or goodness.  Is there such an omnipotent being that cares not, perhaps similar to Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover?  Of such a being, Aristotle of course did not conceptualize a meddling kind of god, good or bad, but rather where perfection caused others to desire reaching towards its apex of unperturbed immovability.

But why must fatalism always posit the negative?  Why must it always end in disaster, death or progressive decay, and not towards some optimism of a future yet to be determined?  Why don’t we hear anyone say, instead, “Oh, it would happen, anyway…”, but implying that the dummy subject of “It” is meant to connote greater fortunes for tomorrow, a happier life to be had, or better days ahead of health and joy?

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are stuck in the rut of a negative outlook because of a medical condition that pervades and will not go away, it is time to replace the dummy subject of “It” with a pronoun or other grammatical subject that conveys a positive outlook upon life’s travails.

Filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is an important first step in filling in the “unknowns” of life’s tomorrows.  And, ultimately, that is the key point, isn’t it?

To avert, subvert and otherwise replace the negative with a positive — and for a Federal employee who can no longer perform all of the essential elements of one’s position, it is the negative “It” that must be replaced with a positive and effective Federal Disability Retirement Application, lest fatalism lead to a determinism that undermines the positive tomorrows that are yet to be.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Legal Representation on Federal Disability Retirement Claims: The simple life

We all crave it; most of us dream of it; some try to implement it.  The “simple” life is the one that runs throughout the cultural history of Americana; from those days of Walden’s Pond and the life proposed by Thoreau and the transcendentalists, to the hippie communes in the Sixties and the movement back to agrarian life of more recent vintage, the desire to “downsize”, simplify and go back to the harkening calls of less complexity, less technology and less everything has always remained throughout.

Yet, “simple” does not mean “easy”, and one has to only visit an Amish farm to recognize that where technology does indeed save time (an hour’s commute by a car can be twice that in a horse and buggy), shedding one’s self of the daily convenience of modernity is no simple matter.

Do we even know what it means to go back to a “simple life”?  Or, by that concept and idea, do we merely mean the peeling away of complexities that have formed in our subjective states of mind, like barnacles that accumulate on the underside of boats over years and timeless travel through life’s trials and tumults, only to have a period of need where chipping them off becomes a necessity?

Television shows and various movies provide for nostalgic images that stir an emotional sense within all of us – of those days of lazy summer when childhoods were enveloped within a haze of timeless carefree thoughts, like so many waves rolling upon the warmth of sand dunes and castles created that only crumble once the day is over.  But that is the point, is it not – of a fictional state of things, of a world that is looked upon with fondness but probably never was, except in the imaginary memories of writers who realize the need to have a hope for a simpler life, but recognize that the reality is much more complex that they would have us believe.

Notice the subtle differentiation – between the “simple life” and the “simpler life”?  That is all we can ultimately hope for – not the former, but perhaps the latter.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of the Federal or Postal job, preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application will often constitute the requirement of striving towards the objective of a simpler life.

The medical condition itself may be complex; the interaction with one’s agency or the postal facility within the context of that medical condition and “dealing” with them about needing to attend to one’s medical condition – all of that is complex and complicated.  And, while a Federal Disability Retirement application does not guarantee a “simple” life, what it does do is to provide an avenue to simplify the greater complexities of life’s trials by preparing for an uncertain future that only seems to be getting more and more complicated.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Attorney Representation Federal Disability Retirement: Bureaucracies

It is an amalgamation of penultimate collectivism; based primarily upon the concept that centralization constitutes efficiency, bureaucracies exist for the sake of a mission long forgotten and forever compelling the existence of its own justified creation.  They have histories, and often historians to record and annotate the accomplishments of their own beings; and the people who work for them speak about them in objective tones of third persons.

Every now and again, a newly-hired employee will bring about a fresh sense of enthusiasm, of new ideas and different ways of doing things; but after a time, each such newbie of fresh growth begins to wilt, like flowers that bloom for a season and then die an expected and predictable death, only to wait for another to take its place.

Bureaucracies tend to do that to their own population – wilt them, kill them, stamp out any newness that might sprout for a brief moment.  And to those outsiders who require the services of a bureaucracy – well, always remember that the bureaucracy will always last longer than even the great period of the dinosaurs.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are considering filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits because of a medical condition that prevents the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s positional duties, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the exposure to a bureaucracy may be the first time; or, perhaps the Federal employee (and certainly the Postal employee) works within a bureaucracy him/herself.  In either event, suddenly being an “outsider” looking in, as opposed to an “insider” looking out, will be a new experience.

It is good to remind one’s self during this process of preparing, formulating, filing and waiting upon the “bureaucracy of bureaucracies” –- the U.S. Office of Personnel Management – that long after the Age of Dinosaurs passed and became extinct, and long, long after global warming or other such identifiable calamitous event will have altered the face of the universe, OPM and other bureaucracies will still be here.  What a thought to ponder.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Legal Representation on Federal Disability Retirement Claims: Joy and trials

It is the defining of life itself; of the spectrum across a wide range of peaks, valleys, proverbial mountaintops and chasms of tumults like a groan beneath the terrain of the earth.  We attempt to avoid the latter and quantitatively expand the former, thinking that if we fill our experiences with joy, the trials will be lessened or the impact less eventful.

There are gauges of summer, the plateau of fall; we sense the discontent of winter and the exhilaration of spring; and like the subtle pull of the orbs afar that impact the tides and moons of horses galloping in the night, the shudder of sensations unfelt and the future yet untold make anxious of us all.

Joy is the experience of human beings; trials, the objective world impinging upon the subjectivity of our daily refrain.  Can we even have one without the other?

We posit fictional hypotheticals that probably never were; of Rousseau’s “State of Nature” where savages roamed in scant loincloths without a care in the world; and of paradise lost like Milton’s foreboding of a utopia now crumbling into the dystopian paragon of untruths and Orwell’s misinformation where totalitarianism becomes the choice of self-immolation.

As Being cannot mean anything without its opposite, Nothingness, so is it not the trials of life that magnify and make relevant the joy felt on any given day?  Can one truly exist without the other?

And yet we attempt to minimize and diminish the latter in thinking that we deserve the former.  But as the inane philosopher now long forgotten once stated with annoyance and greater impertinence, “It is what it is”.  Whatever that means.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are experiencing the “trials” period of one’s life because of a medical condition that prevents the Federal or Postal worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, the attempt to jump over and across the great divide so that one can get back to the “joy” part of life’s offerings by trying to “work with” the Federal agency or Postal service, or to “seek an accommodation” with one’s Federal department or Postal facility, there is another proverbial adage that comes to mind: “Banging one’s head up against the wall.”

It is often the case, unfortunately, that in order to get from the “trials” to the “joy” part of life, the Federal or Postal employee will have to prepare, formulate and file an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be filed with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee wants to or not.

For, in the end, the truth of the matter is, the “trials” part of life is something you have little or no control over – such as a medical condition; it is only the “joy” part of the deal that you can assert some dominance over: by taking the affirmative steps to file an OPM Disability Retirement application.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement for Federal Employees: Those rare, insightful moments

Must it always reach the level of an epiphany, or may it be as a passing point of fluctuating comprehension?

Every now and then, it is like the proverbial entrance into a clearing amidst the darkness of a looming forest; of a light that shines into a chasm heretofore undiscovered; and in that flash of understanding, it is important to grasp it, to tackle the concept, to concretize and declare, lest it slip silently away like the silken tail of a snake slithering into the tall grass.  Or of a dream in the midst of a fitful sleep that reveals what the subconscious desires to tell but just so in a gentle twist, lest the naked truth in the full light of day may be too blunt for the sensibilities of an unvarnished purity wanting but for the fiction of a nightmare too horrifying to encounter in real life.

Is the fool in Shakespeare any less witless than the King who divides his empire among vampires who drain the life of a vibrant ego?  Do the words of the court jester that cuts like a knife through the clouded judgment lost in the garments of wealth and power, transcend the loss of comprehension by those who would see the Emperor’s clothes despite the insight of a child who sees the nakedness of truth?  Do we attribute to animals the identical accolades despite their lack of coherent utterances, when they emit sounds of alarm, engage reflexes of caution and take flight ahead of perceivable approaches to dangers hidden beyond?

Most of life is repetitive boredom, sprinkled with the dust of angels golden and shining as they fly above us in the invisible universe of heavenly orbs, and we rarely notice them but for the slight touch of their comforting robes as the wings disturb the calm air or a mischievous poke on that parting of hairs or the baldness unseen but from a singular perspective from atop; and it is in those rare, insightful moments that life becomes worth living because we clearly, unequivocally and with unmitigated resolve understand, comprehend and care.

Then, the world and its artificial constructs rush right back in to fill the void of monotony, and we carry on with the projects of life that detract and distract, forgetting again the beauty of that which we saw for a brief slice of time.  Thus, the numerous stories of those who briefly crossed the demarcation into the netherworld of death and beyond, but were brought back to “life” by medical specialists who wanted to do “good”, when even that perspective is, at best, questionable.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are contemplating 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, it is often the medical condition itself that compels one to have a moment of epiphany.  Perhaps that rare, insightful moment comes about when the pain becomes unbearable, or when the cognitive faculties become askew and mental clarity sees beyond into the netherworld of the future and its gloomy horizon.

Whatever the circumstances that monotony of chronic medical conditions forces, the realization that the Federal or Postal employee must by necessity prepare, formulate and file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits is one which cannot be avoided, any more than the angel who playfully shaves one side of our face in the twilight of dawn and leaves us wondering about those rare, insightful moments of life’s mysteries.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

OPM Disability Retirement Attorney: Uncharacteristic Behavior

It is the clash between an expectation and the actualization of an encounter, which determines one’s perspective of self-fulfillment of a belief, or a resulting dismay from failure of verifying the basis of a paradigm.  Characteristic behavior is thus that type of human encounter which meets with, or exceeds, one’s predetermined paradigm of what one has already believed to be so; to act out of that previously considered belief system, by definition makes it fall outside of the realm of such expectation.

For the Federal employee and the U.S. Postal worker, the bureaucratic complexity of the entire administrative process of preparing, formulating and 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 normally not a surprise, and meets with or even exceeds, the expectation of an already-formed paradigm of what constitutes the “characteristic behavior” of the system as a whole.

It is the anomaly of the century when efficiency, helpfulness and pleasantries prevail throughout the process of filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, where one hears with surprise and shock that it was “uncharacteristic”.  Sadly, that tells us something.  While somewhat unfortunate, we must always remember that the road of every bureaucratic process is paved with personalities of every type.  We tend to lump the entirety of an administrative process into a single cup and cauldron of judgment, but the reality is that there are multiple categories, just as there are different types of people throughout the universe, distinctly compartmentalized into:  helpful; friendly; efficient; nasty; backstabber; fair; unfair; loyal; unpredictable; just to name a few.

The process of filing a Federal Disability Retirement application through OPM can be a stressful one, if only because it is based upon an obvious stressor to begin with:  a medical condition which impacts one’s ability to perform one’s Federal or Postal job.  But it is not the bureaucratic process itself which adds or detracts from the inherent complexities of the process, but the behavior — characteristic or not — of those who must help along the way or hinder the necessary transition of the Federal or Postal employee, from one of active Federal or Postal employee to that of disability annuitant.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire