The past is often the attraction of selective memories, the passion of antiseptically expunged yearnings, and represent less about factual accuracy than emotions bound to images.
With modern technology, mixed with the relative value of truth and the abandonment of universal principles transcending beyond time and cultural norms, the obsession with oral tradition and a clinging to unnamed tombs of yesteryear, when causes were worth fighting for, a handshake meant the seal of a deal without a follow-up fax or an email confirmation; and when people didn’t check the labels of food ingredients to verify MSG, GMO or other terrifying acronyms which undermine the palate and appetite; those were the days gone by, and the yearning that defines the embellishment of heroism as each day marches in the timelessness of forgotten marshes of mindful embrace.
Time was…but then, we pause, and realize that it is the “now” and the “today” which must be faced. Reminiscences are good for the soul, but rarely profitable for the pocketbook. For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition (whether physical, psychiatric, or an intersecting compilation and aggregate of both) prevents the Federal or Postal employee under FERS or CSRS from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal positional duties, the attraction of the lore of yesteryear will often grow exponentially in parallel form as the medical condition progressively deteriorates.
That is because the convergence of present pain and the increasingly selective memories of past freedom from pain, extends to a future yearning for a time of quietude and peace where the medical condition has resolved itself and the body, mind and spirit can be free of the confinement of the debilitating medical condition. That is a natural reaction of the human essence to be free. But in order to do that, affirmative steps must be taken. Life just doesn’t happen.
Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is just such an affirmative step. One cannot continue to cling to a fading past, and expect that the present will get any better, or that the future will result in greater peace and tranquility. The future is now; the present is something to be acted upon; and the Lore of Yesteryear must be replaced with a growing sense of urgency to embrace memories not of fading photographs of unidentified tombstones of yore, but of living and vibrant experiences today encountered, to be savored for future generations.
Sincerely,
Robert R. McGill, Esquire
OPM Disability Retirement, Et Cetera… 