During the Holiday Season, there are always thoughts pervading concerning redemption, salvation, the “true meaning” of X, and whether we are living by the principles of which we espouse. It is a natural phenomena, precisely because the rush and exhilaration of preparatory work suddenly subsides, and in a flash, the day of reckoning dawns upon us, and the quietude reverberates, resulting in untenable moments of reflective profundity.
The narrative of the kindly old man who drops presents for souls yearning for something more; or of redemptive confessions and regenerative promises declared on faith; these all make up the essence of Western Civilization’s essence of pride, prosperity and the progressive paucity of philosophical punditry. They are the historical metaphors of past meanings, present meanderings and future outpourings. Throughout, it is the essence of one’s soul which we are avoiding, and the vestibules of our reaching out to the future promises we have kept hidden.
Can a person sell his or her soul? There are ways beyond mere transactions which transfer money for goods and services; there is compromise, submission, the word not spoken, and the moment forsaken.
For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who feel lost in such a downtrodden negation of heart, it is often understandable when a medical condition interrupts the delicate flow of life and living. Federal and Postal employees 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 one’s Federal or Postal positional duties, will often feel that their life has been put on pause, and that others are progressing forward while theirs is but a lapse in time.
To file for Federal Disability Retirement (they feel, or are implicitly told) through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is likened to “selling one’s soul” because, by doing so, one is abandoning one’s duty and fealty to the idea of the “good of the mission”.
Beware, however, to always clarify whose soul one is speaking about. For, filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through OPM, for the Federal or Postal worker who is under FERS or CSRS, is to merely govern one’s own life, and to look out for the best interests of one’s own future. It may be that when agencies, coworkers, or even one’s own family talks persuasively about how having that “good” job is more important than one’s health and well-being, that the soul that is being compromised is for the sake of another, and not your own.
Sincerely,
Robert R. McGill, Esquire
OPM Disability Retirement, Et Cetera… 