OPM Disability Retirement Lawyer: The Pastoral Painting

It is that which we strive to achieve; a moment of quietude, an aside of reserved inattention; that plateau where sheep graze silently in pastures green, and the distant echo of a neighbor’s dog barking is merely but a contour from the daily hubbub of reality.  Perhaps the pastoral setting is but an idealized paradigm; but, without it, there is a sense that life is pointless.  We may engage in daily meanderings and wonder about teleological issues on high; but, in the end, something more mundane is the normative constriction which compels us to act.

There is a scene in an old Western, where Mose Harper (who is played by Hank Worden) makes it known that all he wants at the end of his trials and travails is an old rocking chair to sit in, to rock the time away in the wilderness of the life he experiences.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition impacts one’s livelihood, the capacity to continue in one’s chosen career, and the ability to maintain a regular work schedule, filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is tantamount to that metaphorical rocking chair.  For some, it may not seem like much; but one doesn’t know (as the esteemed Paul Harvey used to say) “the rest of the story”, of whether and what Mose Harper did after a few tranquil evenings rocking away.

For the Federal and Postal employee, whether that Federal and Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, it must often be taken in sequential steps of advancement.  The idealized plateau as represented in a Pastoral Painting is often the first step in the process of further life-experiences; and just as Mose Harper asked only for a rocking chair at the end of the day, it is what happens the day after, and the day after that, which will determine the future course of one’s life beyond being an annuitant under FERS Disability Retirement.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset: Beyond the Disequilibrium of Life

Finding a balanced life after a disabling injury or medical condition with OPM Disability Retirement benefits

One can describe, in positive terms, the negative aspects of a thing, as in, “X is y,” etc. Or, as in the case often represented by Maimonides’ Negative Theology, one can elucidate by negation of perceived phenomena, leaving the subtraction of present realities to the imagination of the void.

Some may contend that the latter methodology of descriptive narrative adds nothing to knowledge; for, it is a negation of that which we know, and as King Lear reminded Cordelia, “Nothing will come of nothing:  speak again.”  But there is something beyond the nothingness of negation, is there not?  To negate is to expose the loss of something, the extracting and revealing of that which once was, became detached, and left as a void to be filled.

Thus can life present a semblance of equilibrium, where balance of family, work, community and value of living provides a coherence of a teleology of sorts; and when such coordination of essence in the core of one’s being gets out of whack (the term being of a very technical nature, used in esoteric philosophical discourse, as in, “He whacked away at the pages of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit”), there is a foreboding sense of loss and dispiritedness (again, the negation of a positive attribute).

Medical conditions tend to exonerate the negative theology of life.  Often, it is a subtraction beyond the chronic pain and debilitating nature of the medical condition itself.  For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who must file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal worker is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the issue is often how, and to what extent, a persuasive description of one’s medical condition can purport to effectively represent the chronic and severe nature of one’s medical condition.

Some would contend that such an endeavor is nigh impossible to do; for, as the negation of equilibrium is the disequilibrium of life, so the mere subtraction of what we do and could do, does not necessarily present an accurate picture of one’s life.  And that is what is required, is it not?  Words have meaning; descriptive negations presume a context of knowledge already existent.

For the Federal and Postal employee who must present a compelling Federal Disability Retirement application to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, the conundrum of attempting to adequately describe one’s medical condition, its impact upon one’s ability to perform the essential elements of one’s job, and the further pervasive effect upon one’s personal life, is a conundrum of epic proportions.

To engage in negative theology in the descriptive delineation on SF 3112A is to presume a context which is not yet there; and to describe the disequilibrium brought upon the Federal or Postal employee resulting from a medical condition, is to encounter the wall that separates between words, meanings, and the true experiences of life.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: External-Internal Linkage

Thoreau’s observation that the mass of men lead “lives of quiet desperation” holds a profound place in daily acquiescence to the stresses of modernity; the influence and linkage between the internal workings of biology, psychology and the interplay upon health and wellbeing, and the greater macro-impact from the inevitable encounters with the external, objective world of phenomena, cannot be ignored or otherwise avoided.

The rise of self-help methodologies, of yoga, meditation, exercising and diversionary activities, is merely a reflection of the exacerbation of the internal connection as directly impacted by the external world; the linkage is there; we simply fail to otherwise recognize or acknowledge it.  Stress in the workplace is an accepted part of one’s employment; it is when stresses rise to the level of a hostile workplace that the law allows for some form of alleviated responsiveness.

But filing lawsuits, confronting the obvious, and publicly decrying boorish behavior and actions constituting illegal harassment often compounds the internal turmoil fraught with stresses upon one’s psyche; and one wonders in the end, who wrote the laws governing the litigation of such employment disputes, as special interests from trial lawyers to employers, union conglomerates to corporate lobbyists all had a hand in writing up a statute to protect the singular employee of limited means.

“Quiet desperation” infers resignation and defeat; and for many, the image of the rugged individual who stands alone to fight until death or destruction is the standard to compare one’s own limited power and actions to be employed.  But as the internal linkage to the external world cannot be denied, so health and well-being can be destroyed by the interplay with a continuing hostile workplace.

For Federal and Postal employees who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition prevents one from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, insistence upon continuing one’s chosen career is often a choice to the detriment of the internal affairs of man, with little impact upon the macro-efficiency of the agency.

Federal Disability Retirement is an option of choice for the Federal or Postal worker who is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS-Offset, and is often mandated by the deteriorating health of an individual (internal), necessitated by the inability to perform all of the essential elements of one’s positional duties (external), and by showing by a preponderance of the evidence that the former impacts the latter (linkage), one can qualify for the benefits and salvage the quiet desperation enveloping and engulfing the insular life of an individual seeking help in the dark meanderings of a lonely outpost, where the echoing howl of a single wolf reaching out to the eclipsed moon on a cold and windy morning represents not an animal in distress, but a recognition that the wider world out there is part of man’s destiny for things greater than showing up for work to follow the demands of a bureaucracy lacking of empathy or concern.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire