Federal Employee Medical Retirement: Dealing with Adversity

How does one deal with adversity?  When the adversary is a faceless entity, a bureaucracy which acts as a behemoth of epic proportions, one must take care in choosing the proper battle to engage.  For, ultimately, the victory or loss of a battle is often determined by logistical considerations — of where and when it is fought.

Further, it is important to identify who the “enemy” is against whom one wages a battle.  Is it a separate entity, or is the real enemy one’s self?  When an individual is suffering from a medical condition such that one is weakened, others will often begin to smell the scent of such weakness, and begin to prey upon the deteriorated state if is “worth the while” to fight against the agency, the system, and the entirety of the Federal Bureaucracy.

It is well and good to say, “I’m not giving up” and to fight for one’s rights, but at what cost?  At the cost of one’s health?

More often than not, it is a smart strategic move to leave the battle s of being.  That is the law of the runt; it is the rule of the world.  For Federal and Postal employees who find themselves in a position where one’s medical conditions have deteriorated to a point where he/she can no longer perform one or more of the essential elements of one’s job, it is important to consider whether to recede, and go into the quietude of the morning sun, in order to find the space of recuperative peace, in order to come back to battle another day.

Federal Disability Retirement through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is just such a safety hatch; and whether you are under FERS or CSRS, it is a consideration worth noting, and taking, in order to regain one’s strength, to come back for another day — next time, from atop the vantage point of a hill, instead of looking up from the valley of death and destruction.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

CSRS & FERS Medical Disability Retirement: Deliberative Intent

Thomas Nagel is best known for continuing to remind us of the problem of consciousness in a world which attempts to reduce all acceptable explanations into a language game of reductive materialism.

In his famous essay, he went a step further — by arguing for the position that, yes, there are peculiar and unique characteristics of a conscious species, but more than that, the greater profundity is, How is it like to be X, as X?  Thus the insightful essay, What is it like to a bat, as a bat?  For, it is the last linguistic appendage which makes all the difference — as an X.  Without it, we would be left merely with our imaginations as to what it would be like to be X; with the dependent grammatical appendage, we are forced to consider that there is a unique “something”, whether it be consciousness, spirit, mind, or some other non-physical existence, which uniquely makes X to be something other than the composite of physical characteristics.

How does this relate to Federal Disability Retirement for Federal and Postal Workers under FERS or CSRS? Probably nothing, other than that, on a Saturday morning, after having started Nagel’s recent work, Mind & Cosmos, it becomes an interesting proposition as to how much deliberative intent — i.e., the use of that “other” part of humanity, such as consciousness, awareness, etc. — is utilized, as opposed to a mere mechanistic approach to things.

Human beings are inherently lazy.  Templates exist in order to ease one’s work.  OPM often violates the very essence of its duties by merely regurgitating language which is worn and used.  But for the Federal or Postal Worker who must contend with the cold, non-deliberative physical universe, each battle with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management must be fought by thinking, pondering, applying legal principles which are effective and persuasive.

Only with deliberative intent can one contest and contend against a universe which is uncaring, unfeeling, and impassive to the condition of human suffering.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire