We are told from a very early age that we must have one; like winds that carry seasonal warmth and jet streams that bring unseasonable temperatures, we are ingrained to be purposive, teleological and focused upon the goal in mind.
Wisdom-filled proverbs echo beyond the history of instructional transference from parent to child, community to individual and generation to modernity: aiming for the target; sticking to a task; seeing things to their completion; being patient in everything you do; treating others fairly; 5-step, 10-step or multi-step plans for one’s life; we are admonished throughout of the importance of having a direction in our lives, as if the destination has been predetermined and arriving is merely being pointed in the right direction, traveling some distance and getting there without thought.
Some people clearly follow such a linear route – like the proverbial straight line from point A to destination B; then, there are others who never seem to get a handle on such a concept, while most of the rest of us meander through a confounding maze and are stuck somewhere “in-between”, like those kids in the middle of a brood of accomplishments lost in anonymity between the oldest who is the star of the family, the first born and who gets the greatest amount of attention, and the last one who is the “baby” whom everyone fawns over. But what if a community, a society, the nation as a whole, no longer embraces a cogency of purposive goals?
It is like that “cause” we all live and die for; where modernity scoffs to expunge such lofty ideals, the residue of the populace must abide by its dire consequences, where echoes of past vestiges haunt in cave dwellings of paintings now faded and meaningless, lost forever to the history of silent voices.
Once, there were causes to fight for – of man’s manifest destiny; of fascism to defeat; of the great “Red Scare”; of the domino theory occluding freedom and resulting in totalitarianism; of patriotism and the flag upon a hill; and other images, all the while where the fighting and dying is accomplished not by the sons or daughters of the wealthy and privileged, anymore, but by sons of southern belles and minorities who die or get blown to bits.
Of what door does one knock upon to get one’s direction of life? Where, in life, do we get a free pass to obtain the map in order to even know where we are, where we are going, and how to get there?
For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers 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 positional duties, the direction of one’s life becomes fairly linear whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.
There are three “pathways” to steer upon: Stay in the job and suffer; Resign and walk away with nothing; or, the best direction in such a life, is to prepare, formulate and file an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. And, even as to the second of the three roads taken (Resigning) – remember, you have up until one (1) year from the date of separation from Federal Service to file a Federal Disability Retirement application with OPM.
It is, in the end, good to have a compass in order to lead onwards in the right direction of life, wherever that may be, however one may obtain it, and whenever it is finally achieved.
Sincerely,
Robert R. McGill, Esquire
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Federal Disability Retirement: The Ledger of Life
The Ledger was once that oversized binder which recorded the economic transactions for various purposes — of maintaining income and outlays; of keeping an accounting of various details in one’s life, whether of activities in business or even of one’s habits and patterns of existence. Somehow, it doesn’t seem the same as typing such information into a computer, or of buying a software that categorizes and makes everything neat and simple.
That old Ledger that had to be lugged from one place to another reflected the weight of seriousness just in the act of lifting it; and when you opened the front cover and turned the pages where the latest entry still emitted the scent of ink still drying, one sensed the permanency of recordation as a trait of relevance that could never be erased.
And what of the metaphor — of one’s “Ledger of Life” — a recordation of the transactions that one has engaged; of the weightiness of that placed on one side of the ledger as compared to the negative notations appearing on the opposite side; of the image of St. Peter as the gatekeeper reviewing the annotated columns to determine if you “made it” — all because “The Ledger” reflects the value of your actions during the course of a lifetime?
Do we even think in those terms, anymore? Or, while the dusty old books that used to be kept beneath the wooden grains of counters in dark and dank workshops were left behind when first the technology of modernity made for obsolescence of such anachronistic record keeping, did we then just revert to making mental notes for the things we did or did not do?
Most of us, if asked if we are “eligible” to pass through St. Peter’s exclusive club, would respond thus: “Oh, all in all, I have been a pretty good person and so, Yes, I believe I would qualify.” And so we approach most things in a similar vein: We give ourselves a “pass” and believe that the Ledger of Life would favor our eligibility status.
And so it is with Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer form a medical condition and need to file for FERS Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management: Because you suffer from the medical condition and believe that the medical condition cannot but be proof of eligibility, so you believe OPM cannot but see what you see. But filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits is a paper-presentation to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, and must be proven by a preponderance of the evidence.
It is very rare that any Federal Disability Retirement application is a “slam-dunk” case, or even an “easy” one; and like the Ledger of Life that we have left behind in the dusty heaps of bookshelves long forgotten, preparing an effective FERS Disability Retirement application is not just a simple transaction to be annotated into columns of neat book keeping, but a bureaucratic process that must be proven and argued for — somewhat like the Ledger of Life that must be submitted to St. Peter at the Pearly Gates of Heaven.
Sincerely,
Robert R. McGill, Esquire
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