Where are they? Beyond Platonic Forms and heavenly orbs where the golden dust sparingly sprinkled from the wings of angels in flight, do perfect lives exist and, if so, where? We can suspend disbelief and fantasize of celebrities and the lives of Wall Street wolves with their mansions, beautiful bodies and facial grimaces so tightened by plastic surgery as to make smiling an exertion of monumental phenomena; but, in the end, we all realize that the pinnacle of human achievement is but another endeavor of human fallacy, and never approaching the omniscience of an Aristotelian Unmoved Mover.
If we posit that perfect lives do not exist, then does that vanquish the argument for perfection even of relevance in conceptual or hypothetical argumentation? If that, then why strive for betterment at all, if there is no standard to which one should attempt to reach? If everything is merely relative, how can we compare a relativity devoid of standards upon a non-existent spectrum between good, better and best?
Perfection, of course, for the obsessed, can be paralyzing, precisely because a further amendment, another change, an additional revision, can always arguably make it “more perfect” than not, and therefore one can be left swimming amidst the toxicity of a never-ending eternity of perfecting the imperfections that can never achieve perfection.
For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are preparing an imperfect Federal OPM Disability Retirement application, to be submitted first through one’s agency and the Human Resource Office (if still with the agency or, even if separated, not for more than 31 days), then on to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, be wary of becoming immobilized because you are unable to reach a standard of perfection that will “guarantee” a First Stage Success.
Life never allows for guarantees, leaving aside perfection in an imperfect world. Administrative and bureaucratic procedures mirror life itself: OPM’s imperfect methodology of human engagement in determining the validity of a Federal Disability Retirement application is simply another component within life’s vast array of imperfection.
The key in preparing a Federal Disability Retirement application is not whether the Federal Disability Retirement packet is “perfectly” compiled, but the more relevant question: Is it an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, with the components included of a persuasive narrative, a strong legal argument, and a methodology which includes a roadmap for the U.S. Office of Personnel Management to approve the Federal Disability Retirement application?
Sincerely,
Robert R. McGill, Esquire
OPM Disability Retirement, Et Cetera… 