FERS Disability Retirement Law: The Great Lesson

Once upon a time, people went through experiences without the need to put them to some greater advantage.

Stories abound of WWI and WWII veterans who earned medals for bravery — even the Medal of Honor — and never mentioned it to anyone, until some grandchild wandering up into Grandpa’s attic found a shiny ornament in some dusty old chest, brought it down and asked the old man, “What is this?”  Or, of the Olympic Gold Medalist who similarly went to work, got married and lived a “normal”, unassuming life without make a big todo about his or her accomplishment of being the top athlete in a chosen field.

Nowadays, everyone who experiences anything has to turn it into The Great Lesson.  It becomes an awakening; a springboard to some Eureka moment that propels the person into a higher purpose, a metaphysical transcendence to attaining a greater consciousness, and then to become a corporate motivational speaker who has some profound insight into life, its misgivings and that “Great Lesson” that was allegedly learned from some traumatic experience or other.

The reality is that, the greater lesson beyond any “great lesson” is that the experience itself — whatever it is — is not the hard part; the hard part is to go beyond that experience, and to continue to live a quiet, productive life without trying to sell to everyone how “The Great Lesson” lead you to profound, metaphysical insights which corporate motivational speakers can charge an arm and a leg to hear about.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a disabling 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 job, The Great Lesson of a medical condition is quite simple, and will not get you to some metaphysical consciousness beyond the simplicity of the lesson itself:  Get a Federal Disability Retirement annuity, and begin to focus upon the priority of your health.

There — that’s all there is to it.  Of course, maybe you can package it into some extended motivational speech and make up to 80% of what your former Federal job pays today, so that you can WOW them with some transcendental meditational speech and charge them that arm and a leg, but only after you have regained your health.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill
Lawyer exclusively representing Federal and Postal employees to secure their Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.