There are no perfect lives, only the appearance of perfection. We walk past one another, bump shoulders in large crowds (well, in these times, with social distancing and masks required, perhaps not); and we imagine other lives, other families and other strangers to live lives of perfection, or near-unblemished ones, until we hear otherwise. Twitter, Facebook and other social mediums provide that appearance; but deep down, we know that perfection can never be achieved, only the appearance of it.
As the old idiom goes: Before you judge a person, walk a mile in that person’s shoes — and it is when we learn about the private details of another’s life that we begin to either appreciate our own, or become even more discontented.
Medical conditions are often masked by the appearance of normalcy, and we judge based upon the surface manifestations — a grimace; a groan; a wince; a request for assistance; or perhaps a vacant stare or paralysis of actions. Not all pain can be verified by a diagnostic image; some conditions can only be correlated by real-time sensations.
For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who can no longer perform all of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, contact and consult with an OPM Disability Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law and consider whether the apparent perfection you have been presenting to your Agency or Postal facility is no longer possible because that presentation of perfection has been undermined by the medical condition itself.
Sincerely,
Robert R. McGill, Esquire
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