Medical Retirement from Federal & Postal Employment: The Scraps of Life

But that primary utility and first considerations were always so; if we were inanimate objects able to compete, we would raise our hands and volunteer for the front of the line just to be recognized and implemented.  We whine and complain that the dignity and the essence of each soul should be treated not merely as an end, but a means, and thereby treated with respect and empathy.  But of our actions; how we respond; what we are willing to surrender in order to be used as mere fodder for the foul play of fantasies left as scrap heaps of history?  Are we useful?  Of what good are we?  Do we make a difference?

Such questions become the mindful focus of determining the worth of our being.  Perhaps it is the ingrained determinism of the hunter of yore; that the pursuit of the prey in that pool of genetic yonder era when Darwinian structures compelled the need for vainglory conquests; but in the age of quietude of purpose, where civilizations have settled in cultivated corners of sophisticated inaneness, the need to be recognized and judged as useful still follows upon the self-awareness of one’s relevance in life.

The scraps of life — do we see ourselves as such; like the leftovers unappetizingly shoved aside on a plateful of greasy refuse not even considered by poverty or despair?  How does it “feel” to be forgotten in the dungeons of abandoned corners, left as irrelevant and useless remnants in a society which declares worth and value by the monetary assignation on a gold standard no longer applied?

Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition no longer allows the Federal or Postal employee to perform all of the essential elements of one’s positional duties — they know well the feeling of what is meant by “the scraps of life”.  For, the Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker who no longer can show the fullness of productivity, prove the worth of fulfilling the “Agency’s Mission” or meet the daily quota of processing the voluminous mountains of mail — it is, indeed, the treatment of the human being as merely an end, and not as the means for a society unconcerned with dignity or respect.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is often the only option left, in order to be allowed to “move forward” with life.  For, in the end, it is the next phase of life, the chapter following, and the “new and improved” menu for the visiting dignitary and wide-eyed tourist, that matters most.

And for the Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker who must cast aside the plate of delectable gastronomics now left as the scraps of life?  Preparing, formulating and filing an effective OPM Disability Retirement application — that is the way off of the plate, and into the furnace of a future uncertain, but surely of greater relevance than to be suddenly lifted and placed beneath the table for the waiting pack of dogs to devour.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Medical Hardship Retirement under FERS or CSRS: Life’s Patchwork

Repetition and regularity provides a semblance of orderliness; somehow, patterns in life remain relevant to sanity and stability, and it is the disordered patchwork which creates havoc for want of consistency.  There are those who seek regularity, and are criticized for embracing boredom; then, the one who constantly lives on the edge, where being fired and not knowing the future of tomorrow is handled with a mere shrug and an attitude of libertine disregard.

Most of us live in the middle of extremes; that is why, in reading Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, no extent of profundity is discovered; the median between two extremes is what most of us naturally seek, anyway.  And we appropriate a sense of comfort and security by presuming that others are somewhat like us; to that extent, Kant is probably right in his philosophical belief that we impose structure and order into a universe which is essentially chaotic, in an effort to maintain an internal phenomenology of coherence and comprehension.

Every now and again, however, interrupting forces disrupt the quietude of life’s fortune, and misgivings begin to define those territories we thought had already been conquered, where the savages had been beaten down and the goblins had all been captured.  How we manage crisis; what manner of internal fortitude becomes tested; and what mettle of essence to which we may succumb; these are all questions which we would rather avoid.

It is the contending dialectical forces that are represented by the “Peter Principle” as opposed to the “Dilbert Principle“, by which most of us must endure; where, the former is quickly dampened by cynicism of actual experience, and the latter is always confirmed daily by encounters with a surrealism called “life”.  Life is, indeed, a patchwork of sorts; of different people, coming from a variety of experiences — and yet boringly similar and predictable.  Eccentricities have already been tested and stamped out, contained, restrained and trained into oblivion through the system called, “the public schools” — where uniqueness of thought is curtailed via the pecking order of peer pressure and standardized testing.

Then, of course, there is the Federal employee and U.S. Postal worker — caught in a bureaucracy in which competency and creativity are rarely acknowledged as the avenue for advancement in an administratively hostile universe.  When the Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker suddenly finds himself or herself facing the dilemma of a medical condition, such that the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal employee from continuing in a chosen career because it prevents him or her from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s positional duties — then, it is time to consider filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.

For, in the end, life’s patchwork must by necessity and self-definition reflect the complexity of the world around us; yes, we seek out the “middle ground” — that boring stability of repetitive humdrum of life — while recognizing that the extremes are there for a reason; and while it may not be for us, it exists and always presents a threat.  The key is to avoid it, or even depart from it; as escapism allows only for momentary gratification, and the pattern of life’s patchwork must be sought in the future discourse of our collective sighs.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement from Federal Government Employment: Life’s Joke

The funniest line in literature comes from Carl Sandburg’s “Potato Face Blind Man” stories, where he describes the reason for the wooden mug:  “There is a hole in the bottom of it.  The hole is as big as the bottom.  The nickel goes in and comes out again.  It is for the very poor people who wish to give me a nickel and yet get the nickel back.”

Satire has often been overly-discussed, and attempting to explain why a particular scene, line or story is amusing, is somewhat like trying to explain to a Martian why Bradbury’s chronicles fascinated the young:  it just is, and either you get it, or you don’t.  It is, perhaps, the incongruence between expectation and reality; of a projection of incommensurability that occurs when a portrayal doesn’t quite meet the anticipation of “should”.

In Sandburg’s description, two such anomalies occur:  First, that the figure who holds the mug does so with the expectation that passersby will drop a nickel out of a sense of pity; but second, and poignantly portrayed, that the tables are turned around by the one who allegedly is begging for the nickel, in that he recognizes the empathetic component that there are others who are poorer in the world who also want to give, but needs the nickel more than the beggar to whom it is given.  Thus, the hole on the bottom where the nickel given drops back for the giver, yet the act of giving has been consummated.

Of course, in modernity, perhaps such innocence of satiric portrayal is no longer thought to contain humor; that, as the ethics of inequality and financial disparity have given rise to resentment, and the inane concept of “fairness” today pervades the political spectrum throughout, the focus would be upon the fact of maliciously describing a person with a disability in terms which might betray mocking jest.  But that is clearly not what Sandburg meant by it; and, indeed, it was because he believed that his generation lacked children’s stories which taught lessons of virtue and behavioral uprightness, that he engaged the literary device of satire.

Life itself is difficult enough without undermining the joy of a joke recognized.  A funny line, a witty scene, a belly-laugh from a picture of incongruence; such moments allow for innocence and the lightness of being to prevail as an interlude to an otherwise dreary continuum of surviving in a world which shows but cold shoulders twisted and followed by phony smiles to cut the throats of back-turned bystanders.

Such experiences, of course, are not new to the Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker who suffers through the meanness of workplace hostility and harassment at the hands of supervisors and coworkers, merely because a medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of his or her positional duties.  Whether under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, there comes a time when the Federal or Postal worker must decide to prepare an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be filed with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, in order to escape the diatribes of the Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service.

Carl Sandburg’s joke was of a time when true empathy was understood by all; unfortunately, in modernity, the nickel which was meant to be returned to the giving passerby, would today be snatched up by wolves in waiting, where the lambs who once roamed the hillside of life’s joke no longer gather upon the pastures of a forgotten innocence forever lost.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Early Medical Retirement from Federal Employment: Diaphanous characters

Like garments left little for the imagination, the thin veil we wear rarely conceals the warts and freckles which spread throughout the malignancy of our souls.  People often mistake and confuse Christendom’s barring of an impure taint from entering the gates of its exclusive club; it is not what you did, but that you did it, and refused to take the steps to expiate the uncleanliness.

Thus, from the perspective unsoiled whiteness, a speck will blemish whether the dimensions of the spot are quantifiable or not.  That is why we dress ourselves with something, or anything, thinking that behind the veil — despite its translucent and revelatory insubstantiality — will somehow provide a semblance of security in an otherwise brutal world of appearances even for lack of subtlety.  And it is with that diaphanous character — the one which allows for surface niceties, inane salutations and barely restrained disdain for one another — that we pursue our own interests, determine the selfish destiny of fated lives, and consider not the greater interests of a community no longer existing but for suburban neighborhoods lined with pristine lawns sanctified by an immaculate insensitivity for disregard of each other’s needs.

No, the character remains whatever the cosmetic superficiality we attempt to apply; and when we put too much make-up on, or inadvertently smear the eye-liner or lipstick of incommensurate measures, there will be waiting that one who is only too pleased to point it out.

And, any such veneer of empathy quickly dissipates once there is weakness revealed — as with Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who fail to perform one or more of the essential elements of the Federal or Postal position, resulting from a medical condition which clearly impacts the ability and capacity to fulfill the positional requirements.  Such Federal employees and Postal workers, whether under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, have the choice of filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, and indeed, this is often the best remaining alternative to embrace.

For, the greater society which proceeds obliviously beyond the troubles experienced by a next door neighbor otherwise unknown but for an occasional wave of the hand, nod of the chin or silent stares of impassivity as the roar of the lawnmower eviscerates the quietude of a summer’s day, merely reflects what occurs daily in the hallways and corners of offices throughout the microcosmic insignificance of what we do daily; we become mean, and only on the deathbeds of sudden conversions do we consider the consequences of our actions.

No, the diaphanous character which we pass by each day needs to be left alone, and for the Federal employee and U.S. Postal worker who experiences daily the subtle hints and not-so-subtle warnings of harassment and intimidation merely because a medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal worker from performing all of the essential elements of the Federal or Postal job, it is time to shake off the trepidation of life’s cold waters, and dive into the next phase which awaits you, like a lake of welcoming freshness with open arms revealing that childhood dream on the lazy elbows of a memory once forgotten, but still remembered with the voice which beckons in a whisper, “There is still a life beyond.”

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS & CSRS Medical Retirement: Fated Lives Intersecting

To state that, because something has happened, it was fated to happen, is to merely confess a tautology of meaningless repetition; and so there must be more to it than what the words themselves seem to logically undermine.  Thus, when Cassius lamented to Brutus that men at times “are master of their fates; the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings,” he was referring to the clash between human will and the predetermination of events already set, and despite our best efforts, our condemnation by force of will, it is our own pathos that evinces tragedy.

From Classical Greek mythologies to Heraclitus and beyond, the one constant throughout is that, like the river which ever flows and shifts to erode the currency in time, there is little that we can do to forego the fated intersection of lives.

The people we sit beside in school, whether we reach out to make friends or ignore in silent disdain; the lives we impact, whether by choice or by unintended disregard; it is because we cannot live in seclusion and the profound truism of John Donne’s poetry that, indeed, the bell tolls not for everyone else, but specifically for each person, that hamlets and hermitages abound in defiance of fated encounters.

That loneliness and sense of abandonment by all around, is never more powerful than when a person is beset with a medical condition, and suddenly it is as if one is either a martyr or a person shunned for contracting leprosy; either way, the doom of fate and the promising stars have banished any history of meaningful contributions previously attributable.

For the Federal employee and U.S. Postal worker who suffers 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 the Federal position or Postal craft, the sense that the Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service will not be supportive of a filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, is not just a mere chimera based upon unfounded psychosis; it is, instead, a very real dilemma.

And that is where fate, will and intersecting lives must be deliberatively evaluated and carefully analyzed; for, who is informed, at what point, and when to speak words of intended acts, may govern the future course of an Agency’s reactive motive.  For, the Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker, whether under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the time has clearly come when one may well believe that fated lives intersecting must be viewed not merely as a tautology of inane beliefs, but where careful scrutiny must be engaged in so that the stars do not interfere in the playful laughter of gods and karma, in the effective preparation, formulating and filing of a Federal Disability Retirement application.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire