FERS Disability Retirement from OPM: Time to Heal

Depending upon where you place the verbal accent to accentuate one or the other of the 3 words strung together, the phrase can have different meanings.  There is a time to heal; it takes time in order to heal; over a stretch of time, healing may occur; as time passes, the trauma becomes less powerful, and healing takes time.

Time and distance allows for acceptance to occur.  The regularity of a person’s absence or that of a beloved pet, allows for habit to incorporate the missing “other”.  Death, as a finality of non-existence, is something which modernity attempts to avoid.

Yes, we read about it in the obituaries, and recognize that it happens every day, all around us; but in an antiseptic universe where we insulate ourselves from the objective world by getting lost in the virtual universe of Smart Phones, Computers, and the idolization of youth — we avoid the natural occurrence of mortality’s end.

Our encounter with Being, as Heidegger would put it, is the regular avoidance of choice by engaging in human projects in an effort to “forget” the teleological result of our state of being; and so we need time in order to heal from the recognition of the extinction of others, lest our own imaginations fail to save us.

Time was, because of famine and disease, a family of a dozen could see death of at least a few, but modern medicine has cured us of that calamity — until the pandemic reminder of recent vintage.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition reminds you daily of the need to heal, time is unfortunately not on your side.  The daily grind of your work doesn’t allow you to heal.  Healing needs time away and time in and of itself in order to allow for healing to occur.

Contact a Federal Lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and consider that Federal Disability Retirement benefits will allow you to focus upon your health, and allow Time to Heal.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill
Lawyer exclusively representing Federal and Postal employees to secure their Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

 

FERS Medical Retirement: Indicators and the Berkeley Problem

Are other people’s private thoughts different from ours?  Or, is “existence” defined as Berkeley attempted to clarify it?

George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, was a brilliant 18th Century Metaphysician who effectively criticized Descartes, Malebranche, Locke and others; and, although he is often considered a “second-tier” philosopher, was logically sound in his defense of Idealism.

His famous precept — Esse est percipi (“To be is to be perceived”) — is often simplistically attacked by arguing thus: “So, what you are saying is that, once I leave the room, the room I left no longer exists because I am not perceiving it, anymore.”  No, not quite; no more than a person’s thoughts no longer exist once the conversation ends.

Berkeley’s conception of “existence” encompasses not only the worlds we directly perceive, but also the ones which we have perceived and can potentially perceive.  And his philosophical approach is more relevant today than ever before, as we insulate ourselves on computers and Smart phones, where “reality” is almost entirely encompassed by the confined universe of the surreal and virtual meta-universe of the Internet.

For many Federal employees and U.S. Postal Service workers who are considering filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management under FERS, the indicators and the Berkeley Problem persist: For many, whether psychiatric conditions or chronic pain, the “reality” of such medical conditions are “subjective” — meaning, they do not exist because they cannot be perceived.

But “perception” encompasses the conceptual arena of “feelings”, as well, and while OPM may attempt to dismiss your claims for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, they are clearly unaware that this attorney — the one writing this blog piece — wrote his Masters’ Thesis on the Berkeley problem — and is well aware of how to counter OPM’s lame arguments.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Lawyer exclusively representing Federal and Postal employees to secure their Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

 

Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) disability Retirement: In Captured Time

It can be a photograph — of a time frozen.  In our imagination, whenever we come upon the same photograph, the mind’s eye begins to immediately re-live that moment captured, and provides the context, the vestigial events surrounding that frozen tundra of an otherwise stoic moment.

If it is an image which has no relationship with you — perhaps seen at a neighbor’s house or a friend’s apartment — then the moment in captured time remains just what it represents: an event, a moment, a picture of people as they are, represented by the photograph in captured time.

Of course, you can still put your imagination to work and try and realize what had occurred, when it was taken, who took the photograph, and perhaps even contextualize the image by combining your own memories with a creative insertion of projected impositions upon that tundra of timelessness — but in the end, it would all be “make believe”.

In life, captured time is also one of immobility and paralysis.  Medical conditions also bring us in captured time by refusing to allow us to move forward.  Regression is an element in captured time when medical conditions become chronic.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who want to move their lives forward and beyond the moment in captured time, contact a Disability Retirement Lawyer who specializes in OPM Federal Disability Retirement Law, and begin the process of moving outside of captured time, and into greater moments of life and living, where the frozen tundra of remaining in captured time is replaced with the warmth of living beyond the lifeless inertia of a photograph unrelated.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Lawyer

 

Federal Disability Retirement under FERS: The Inconsequential

In the annals of history, most of us remain as the inconsequential.  Not even a footnote, nor even a passing reference, we are lumped into generations of third-person subjects unnamed and faceless.  We might read, for instance, that during the “Sixties” or “Seventies” (or beyond), this group of people or that community of individuals did X or participated in Y, and we might say to ourselves, “Oh, that is a reference to my generation”.  Yet, as an individual, it is rare to be identified by name.

History always fails to recognize the inconsequential; except, perhaps, by memory of relatives and faded photographs barely remembered in gatherings where old folks once chattered about this or that person whose absence emphasizes the starkness of the inconsequential.

Is that what many of us fear?  Not just about being ignored; and perhaps not even of leaving this world without a mark of recollection; but of being one of the inconsequential within a mass populace of unknown graves, unmarked but for those faded memories of vestiges in whispered conversations once echoing down the forgotten chambers of time.

And of that place where we toiled for a decade or more — where so much time was spent, so much effort and expenditure of labor: The workplace.  Once we are gone, will we even be remembered?  Will a fellow worker say, years hence, “Oh, remember that guy who…?”

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 Federal or Postal job, the fear of becoming one of the “inconsequential” is often what makes the Federal or Postal worker pause before considering filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits.

But just remember this: There is life after work, and whatever “consequential” work you believe you contributed to the Federal Agency or the Postal Service, there is nothing that cannot be replaced, and the greater consequence of failing to attend to one’s health is what makes for the inconsequential to loom larger with greater consequences down the road.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement: Happiness Lasting

Can the precipice of elation last for long?  What of contentment — a seemingly “lower-level” joy that pervades and remains for the duration of a season?  Does evidence of its durability depend upon a smile frozen upon one’s face, or can it continue to establish its existence with gleaming eyes and a perpetual grin that seems never to go away?  Is glee in youth different from a winter’s discontent followed by a summer of joy, and does a period of happiness fostered by nostalgia the same as two young lovers who proclaim the currency of an unfettered passion for life?

Modernity celebrates the cult of youth, and it is thus assumed that happiness is the sole possession of those who look and declare youthfulness; but in the end, is it just wasted energy that dissipates because the young have no knowledge of how to handle such emotional turbulence?  What does it mean to “be happy”, and should it ever be considered as a worthwhile “goal” as opposed to a byproduct of a life well lived?

When a person feels elation, should the advice be: Temper it, for such a spectrum of heights will never last and you will find its opposite and negative effect at the end of it all — of dread and dismal desolation.  Or, should one just enjoy it while it exists, and deal with its opposite when it comes about?

Aristotle’s approach of finding the middle ground — of a moderation of temperament and approach to life — may allow for happiness lasting precisely because the height and depths of the spectrum of human emotions are never allowed to consume us.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, the idea that happiness lasting can no longer be attained is a pervasive feeling because of the medical condition itself and the effects upon one’s life and career.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS may not be the “solution” to attain happiness, but it can be a process where intermediate goals can be achieved — of what to do during the pendency of one’s medical condition; of how to change careers; of how to attain a sense of stability for the future while attending to one’s own health and well-being.

It is a means to an end, where happiness lasting can be seen in the short-term goal of securing one’s future by filing for, and obtaining, a FERS Disability Retirement annuity before the next set of challenges in life’s fulfillment of changing circumstances must be faced again.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: The light in someone else’s home

Walking the dog out past dusk, or perhaps standing in the backyard after the sun sets; or, in an apartment complex looking out beyond; a light turns on in someone else’s home; we wonder, who is it, what are they like, and how different are they?  Do others, upon seeing the light switched on in your home, wonder at the owner — the possessor of the finger that flicked the contraption that illuminated the room and altered it from darkness into a visually acute arena of human activity?

Why do we spend so much time pondering about alien lives in other worlds, in faraway universes beyond our very own, when scant little attention is paid to knowing about our next door neighbor?

Some would give a quick scoff at such a thought and quip, “If only you knew my next door neighbor — you wouldn’t want to know!”  And yet, it is always the one that is “just beyond” that attracts our attention — not the person sitting next to you on a train, or the woman with three screaming children on public transportation; rather, it is the unseen stranger who flicked on the light switch afar, whom we cannot see but by shadows that pass behind the blinds that veil; that is the person who sparks an imagination that there are other lives, other ways to live, and who remind us that the light in someone else’s home means that there are other ways of seeing things, living life and having different opinions, goals, dreams and conversations.

The objectivization of other human beings is the basis by which murders are committed, wars are justified and slogans are written; it is only when the warmth of a light that suddenly illuminates the darkness that prevailed begins to permeate one’s consciousness of what it all means, is when human empathy and compassion begins to form.

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 Federal or Postal job, the light in someone else’s home is the one left unlit, and that is often why the harassment begins, the coworkers remain uncaring and the agency seems oblivious to your deteriorating health.

It often seems as if the world cares not; that, despite your years of loyalty shown, late-nights expended to complete an important agency project, or staying beyond the hours to finish the sorting, distribution and delivery — now it is supposed to be someone else’s turn to switch on the light and carry forth the mission.

Preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be filed with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, may be the only option left.  Whatever the conditions, it is no longer the light in someone else’s home that should be of concern, but the darkness left in your own that needs to change, by preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted to OPM.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement: Silent lives defying interpretation

Life is a mystery, and individual lives a puzzle untold.  It is the calluses that we develop throughout our lives that diminish our individual and collective curiosity to get to know the “other”.

We are born with a teleological intellect striving to unravel and unmask the depths of human essence; but modernity, technology and the singular focus of tangents often involving prurient asides distract and envelop with unwavering obsessions, but it has gotten worse:  no, not in any violent manner or upheaval of historical significance; rather, the electronic means of texting, emailing, Facebook-ing and other such means – which, if one pauses for just a moment to reflect, is merely a white page on a screen of illuminating blindness where symbols representing communicative ignorance are exchanged through the ethereal conduit of airwaves – give an artificial semblance of comfort that we are still engaging in the essential project of destined human activity:  getting to know one another.

When, in fact, the distance between words and the human touch; the distinction between the beep apprising one of receiving a message and the subtleties of an eyebrow raised, a grimace faintly made or a sparkle from eyes admiring; or the differentiation between black lettering upon a lighted page as opposed to the intonation and undulating mellifluousness of the softly spoken word – these, we are losing as each day passes, unnoticed, unconcernedly, and without any real hope of recovery.

It is, in the end, those silent lives defying interpretation which are lost forever on the doorsteps of unwritten historical accounts, despite the stories never told, the narratives forever undeclared and the characters uncharted because of the mystery of life and the conundrum of human lives.

History, it has been said, is written by “winners”; and if there is indeed truth in such a statement, then its corollary opposite must be similarly true:  unwritten and unknown accounts are forgotten or never written of those “losers”.  But that is only half of the truth; for, there are those countless bystanders who are never acknowledge, but fail to be inserted and included in the narrative of unmarked graves unacknowledged through the accounts of history untold.

We all want to be “significant”; we all want to “make a difference”; and for Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition cuts short a promising career, a relevant contribution to the “mission” of the Federal Agency, or make a difference to an old woman living alone who waves hello to the Letter Carrier as the high-point of her day – filing a Federal Disability Retirement application, whether the Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, may seem like the end of that teleological journey that we are all engaged in.

But always remember that there is life after the Federal workplace, and whether you are an active Federal or Postal employee, or getting ready to take that step to initiate a Federal Disability Retirement application, there are still silent lives defying interpretation, and yours is one of them.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

Federal & Postal Disability Retirement: The caustic nature of disdain in parity

In human history, class structure — whether of bloodlines or lineage; of wealth or claim to title and royalty; or of validated descendants from ancestral superiority — has been the norm.

Then, along came a religious figure (unnamed herein to avoid risk of inflammatory offense and preventing the potential for implosions of alarming hashtags in fits of fear and panic) who posited the notion that the “poor” (that class of mass populace which comprises the greater part of the world) should take “pity” upon the “rich” (those in the minority of the greater class struggle who control and manipulate the invisible levers of the world) because of the difficulties inherent in obtaining the proper credentials to enter through the proverbial pearly gates.

He went further in word-pictures of masterful storytelling, painting images of hellfire, suffering and punishment for those who mistreated the former, and where rewards, awards and commendations bestowed were merely of a temporary and ephemeral nature, whereas the eternal damnation based upon pleasures enjoyed in the temporal world would last well beyond the palliative superficiality of currency beheld.

The problem unstated, however, when the concept of “pity” was introduced, was twofold:  First, the validation of such a feeling and perspective made equals of those in unequal circumstances, and one could even argue, reversed the roles maintained for societal conformity and stability, and enforced a parity of stature; and, second, the emotional and psychological make-up comprised in the very heart of “pity”, is akin to “disdain”, and is a close cousin thereof.  Yes, yes — the one attaches to charity, a desire to assist and retains elements of empathy, sympathy, etc.; but it is more than that.  “Pity” allows for parity of status and stature, just as “disdain” reverses the roles of societal convention.

That religious figure of yore (though we may impute total and complete omniscience upon the fella) injected into society a heretofore unnecessary and problematic component of societal disruption.  It is, indeed, the caustic nature of disdain, which can evolve from pity, that presents itself as the poison which kills and the infectious spreading of ill-will and discomfiture.  The feeling of unease quickly spread throughout nations and continents, and we are in the state we find ourselves in modernity, because of that uninvited infusion of dissatisfaction.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who daily toil with a medical condition, and face the onslaught of the Federal workforce and the Postal groups, the problem of pity and disdain, and their combined causticity is well-known.  So long as you were healthy and fully productive, your coworkers, Supervisors and Managers treated you within the well-defined “class-structure” of acceptable conduct and behavior.  Once it was “found out” about your medical condition, suddenly their attitude and treatment towards you changed, and altered dramatically, or perhaps (in some instances) in incremental subtleties of quiet reserve but spiteful turns.

Perhaps some “pitied” you, and you them; but such feelings have turned to disdain — not on their half, but from your perspective. Why?  How?  You are the one with the medical condition, who cannot perform all of the essential elements of your Federal or Postal job, so what right have you?

Precisely because of that historical figure of yesteryear; that the true essence of human nature is to be cruel, and thus the best alternative remaining is to prepare an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be filed with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, in an effort to preserve the last vestiges of a class structure quickly fading in this world where the caustic nature of disdain in parity still survives.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: The mere asking of a question

In modernity, the asking of the question in itself raises a suspicion.  Being curious no longer kills the cat in some obscure, proverbial manner; to inquire immediately brands the individual and categorizes the questioner based upon the query of conventional consciousness.  Thus is debate of any kind quelled; for, to engage in a dialectical process requires a prefatory landscape of imaginative fertility; but in an atmosphere of poison and shallow interests already consecrated, there can be no classic form of “give-and-take”, of a level of intellectual inquiry required for the pursuance of excellence, improvement or uncanonized thought processes.

Can society ever escape from this cycle of self-immolation, where intellectual integrity is questioned, when speakers are shouted down at quiet lecture halls of solicitations for a teleology of thought, and at a level of purposive questioning, as in the days of yore when the pestering Socrates questioned every convention of the powerful and influential?

It will be difficult, if only because the widespread de-coupling of thought from information, separated by the force of modern technology, where deviation from identity is difficult to maintain, has made drones of us all.  Fortunately, law is, and remains somewhat in a sacrosanct manner, an arena which allows the simple query to survive, if only within the compound of argumentation for a cause.

For the Federal employee and U.S. Postal worker who becomes the victim of one’s own bureaucracy, where a medical condition requires an accommodation but the Federal Agency or the U.S. Postal Service is unable, or unwilling, to pursue avenues to allow for the continuation of one’s chosen career, preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is often the best and only alternative to pursue.

The battle of inquiry and improvement — for, if you think about it, they go hand in hand in that the only way to “improve” anything is by questioning the status quo — may have to come to an end; and as it takes effort to expend to question and contend for greater heights and levels of excellence, so the Federal or Postal employee who suffers from a medical condition, such that the medical condition no longer allows for the Federal or Postal employee to perform all of the essential elements of one’s positional duties with the Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service — the energy expended in other areas must now be preserved to attend to one’s medical condition and the deteriorating health of the employee’s body, mind and soul.

Sometimes, the mere asking of a question must be left alone, where silence is the golden ray of future radiance, and where youth may be the proper province to leave behind a generation of upstarts who never had the opportunity to ask that ever-childhood query, “Why?”

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

 

OPM Federal Medical Retirement Help: Jobs — the true civil rights

Throughout history, across national and international lines of artificial demarcations; over barriers confining and limiting all conceivable sectarian ceilings; in every society, community and communitarian conglomeration where people must live and tolerate one another, there has always been an allegation of unfair treatment, discriminatory division, and biased cacophony of complaints.  Perhaps all of them are valid and legitimate; perhaps some are and others not as much.

Whether by ethnic identification, normative connection, racial similarities or shared sexual orientation, the treatment by any given society of a group bifurcated by an identifiable feature of appearance, lineage or historical caricature, is forever fraught with inherent complexities.  Politicians have their own motivations for agreeing or disagreeing with a group’s alleged violation of “rights” in a society; beyond the vote, they want the financial support and agreement to refrain from disruption of speechifying and rallying.

The problem with each identifiable claim of unfair treatment, however, is that the impact upon other groups outside of the chain of identification can be so alien as to defy empathy of relating; I am not my brother’s keeper if I cannot relate to the existential phenomenology of derisive treatment.  Yet, what has been “missing” in each historical movement shouting for equal and fair treatment, is the one and only true civil rights issue which touches every ethnic, racial and cultural divide — jobs.  It is the one component in every given society which touches every household, whether by racial, sexual or ethnic identification.  It provides for a standard of living; it gives purpose and substance to each individual; and it reflects upon the magnitude of a society’s caring for the aggregation of citizenry.

The flight of jobs leaves behind the devastation of towns and cities; and the abandoned homes and former factory buildings no longer bright with endless rows of fluorescent lights after many have gone home, is a testament to the blight of future hopes and dreams.  Decade after decade, we hear of “trade agreements” which will “brings jobs back”; but to whose benefit?  No one ever asks that question.  And as each year the jobs flee, the trumpeting of the next great “agreement” is touted from the soapbox of hope.

Sometimes, it seems that we all fall prey to the conmen of political expediency, where taking up causes which divide and separate, while ignoring the only true cause which matters, is done with purposive infamy.  Indeed, that very same issue is often the stumbling block for Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are considering 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.

The Federal or Postal employee who suffers from a medical condition, such that the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of his or her position, will often pause because of the very nature of change — of the loss of one’s job, lessening of income, and alteration of circumstances.

Having a job is always a comfort of security, and sometimes a luxury of sorts, especially if you are healthy and able.  In many ways, it is the one and only true civil rights issue, and for the Federal and Postal worker, to “give up” that “right” when it has been the source of one’s identity — not to a group or with a status based upon a cultural divide, but upon the singular factor which matters to most — of pride, productivity and purpose, it is often understandably difficult to take the next but necessary step in preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through OPM.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire