Federal Disability Retirement: The Focus of Happiness

Self-focus necessarily leads to self-examination; and however one recites the variations of Socrates’ admonition, it essentially came to this: An unexamined life is not a worthy life.  And so the race to constantly examine ourselves has always been the focus of Western thought — both in the philosophical tradition, as well as in the theological tradition.  For, both Christianity and Judaism, also, require self-focus: of one’s actions, one’s sinful nature, and the need to self-correct in order to attain an entrance into heaven.

Eastern thought, generally speaking, of course (as all such discussions must embrace generalities unless we are to engage in an endless discussion of unattainable depth) engages in the opposite course of action: Whether Confucianism, which directs one to attain a level of filial piety in sacrificing for one’s family, or Zen Buddhism which calls for one to abandon the ego of self, the ultimate focus is to direct one’s self away from the very essence of self.

Thus is happiness not important or even relevant.  The obsession on one’s happiness, then, is often thought of as an unhealthy obsession more prevalent in thought because of the Western tradition of philosophy and theology.  But of both — Eastern and Western thought — health is a matter of concern quite apart from one’s happiness.  For, without health, there can be no happiness, no filial piety, and certainly not an abandonment of the self, precisely because without health, there can be no self to begin with, and thus no abandonment of the self.

For Federal Gov. employees and U.S. Postal Service workers who suffer form a medical condition which necessitates filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management under FERS, it matters not whether the focus of happiness is the basis for the need to file for Federal Employee or Postal Worker Disability Retirement benefits.  In the end, nothing matters unless one maintains a basic level of health.

Contact a FERS Disability Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and consider that the focus of happiness begins, both in Eastern and Western thought, with the maintenance of one’s health, where mind and spirit must both retain a constant level of vitality in order to live a meaningful life.

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.

 

OPM Disability Retirement under FERS: When We Were Young

When we were young, we used to think that good health would last forever.  When we were young, taking risks was not such a big deal, because we really thought of ourselves as invincible beings.  When we were young, we figured that tomorrow was just a concept applicable to very old people, and that today was the only tense that mattered.  When we were young, old age, sickness, pain, being limited by the deterioration of our bodies — that was something that the “other person” experienced; not me.

When we were young, the future was always bright, the past was merely a fuzzy yesterday, and today was as promising as the North Star that twinkled upon the eternal promise of our own strengths.  When we were young, life was a limitless opportunity which never had the word “never” in it.

You get the idea.  We were all once young, and foolish in our beliefs.  Life, in the end, is a lesson of humility, and as one grows older, reality tempers the foolishness we once embraced.

For Federal employees and 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, contact a Federal Disability Retirement Lawyer and consider whether or not FERS Disability Retirement is an option for you.

Yes, when we were young, such an option was not even a consideration; but when we are older, wisdom tells us that not everything we wish for, do we get, and not every option can we “go it alone”, and sometimes having an aggressive advocate to fight for your rights — a FERS Disability Retirement Lawyer — is what being older teaches us: Of having some sense and wisdom.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS Medical Retirement from the OPM: The person who wasn’t

It sounds somewhat like a Hitchcock film — or, is that too archaic a reference these days?  Is Hitchcock a film director whom nobody knows, anymore — another person who wasn’t?  Or, more precisely, “Isn’t” but was?  Is that the greatest fear of most people — the negation that erases, and why immortality and the existence of an afterlife is so important?

It is like Berkeley’s problem of the disappearing room — it is easy enough to imagine that when we exit one room and enter another, the first or previous one still exists in quite the same manner as when we last observed it (with the exception, perhaps, of a mouse scurrying along the baseboards or someone else entering the room while we are gone, changing the placement of the furniture, sitting down and smoking a cigar and changing the atmosphere in the room, etc.) — and the definition of “existence” as tied to our capacity to observe or perceive an object.

It is the thought of our erasure from existence that is the fodder for fear; yet, the self-contradiction of such a fear is so obvious as to logically obviate such a fear, but it doesn’t.  For the contradiction goes as follows: Our fear is based upon our thought of an event that cannot be, precisely because our erasure from the image formed by the thought cannot remain since we no longer exist; yet, it is the prevailing image of non-existence that haunts even though the image would not exist except during the pendency of our existence in formulating that image.  Existence reminds us of immortality; non-existence, of our vulnerability.

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, remember that the mere telling of one’s intention to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits may trigger a host of reactionary retributions by the Federal Agency or the Postal Service, and so one should be carefully cautioned, guided and counseled by a lawyer when considering entering the administrative arena of filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits.

It is as if the information about filing for FERS Disability Retirement benefits is a reminder of one’s mortality — that a medical condition that impacts you reminds those at the Federal Agency or the Postal Service that it could also happen to them — and thus the Federal Agency or the Postal Service moves quickly to erase such reminders by initiating adverse actions, harassing you, intimidating you, etc. — so that such reminders can quickly be erased in order to make you into the person who wasn’t.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS Disability Retirement: The subtlety of first light

Have you ever stood outside when first light breaks upon the darkened grounds?

How you struggle to see as your feet stretch forward with trepidation, unsure because of the shadows that befall, and with squinting eyes and a deepened sense of sleepiness, you struggle with the dawn of pre-dawn solemnity; and then, with such creeping imperceptibility, the world around begins to come into focus like the steamed mirror that suddenly lifts to show a reflection of a man standing and staring back at you; and the world in its sharp clarity unravels and manifests with a form of Being in its truest essence of Being.

When does the subtlety of first light sharpen into an image of unmistakable lightness of Being?  Can you ever pinpoint the moment?

It is always the incremental nature of beauty that creeps upon us, like the stealthy impact of the perfect word, the unannounced comma and the hyphenated pause; or like medical conditions that begin with a slight unease, evolve into a nuisance and become a chronic presence that just won’t go away.

Perhaps you cannot point to a particular day, or even a period when you first noticed that you could no longer perform one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal position?  Like the subtlety of first light, there is no way to quantify the precise moment where darkness and light once clashing became the dominant force of visual clarity when once dawn reached beyond the rim of the universe?

Yet, on Standard Form 3112A, Applicant’s Statement of Disability, it asks the question when you, as a Federal or Postal employee, first became disabled — i.e., unable to perform one or more of the essential elements of your Federal or Postal job.  It is an important question and should not be lightly answered; for, there can be some dire legal consequences if you put down the “wrong” answer.

A “misstatement” can come back to bite; both in monetary terms, as well as providing a basis for an inconsistency where the U.S. Office of Personnel Management can use it selectively, as they often do, and extrapolate from other sources and argue that the inconsistency is more than mere coincidence, but a deliberate attempt to mislead and obfuscate.

And like the subtlety of first light, the answer to a question posed on SF 3112A is more than a fight between light and darkness; it is a question posed that may determine the success or failure of a Federal Disability Retirement application.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Lawyer Representation for Federal Disability Claims: Rituals

All of us engage in them — whether of religious significance or arcane remnants of superstitious beliefs harkening for magic, witch’s potions and lost incantations we believe can still work (or perhaps a childhood belief from watching Star Wars that there is really a “force” beyond the cold reality of day-to-day monotony) — we just don’t think of it in those terms.

How we wash our hands; what daily preparations we must engage before leaving the house; the manner of locking doors; the inner voices of prayers said before a meal; or of begging voices just before a sports event; these and many more rituals are the fodder that make for individual personalities otherwise uninteresting to the rest of world except to one’s family, spouse, brothers and sisters, and often not even to them.

Is it all bosh or superstition?  Can we — or should we — submit to the cold and impervious reality of logic, science and the algorithm of facts and mathematical calculations and discard the rituals of ancient cultures and dungeons where nuns bore babies and the fervently religious were tortured and murdered? Do we so callously abandon the humanity of our forefathers merely because the Age of Science is now upon us?

In the end, the rituals we embrace may give us comfort beyond the repetition of predictability; they may be engaged because they “work”.

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, it may be time to “change” some of the ritualistic thinking that we have become steeped in.

Change, alteration, modification, etc., is a difficult pathway to adopt.  One must, in the end, consider “why” we engage in a ritual — for, if it is because we have “always done it”, as opposed to retaining a meaningfulness and significance beyond the rote of repetitive monotony, then it may be time to reconsider and rearrange the proverbial furniture upon the deck of a sinking ship.

The Federal or Postal worker who has — through the pain of a medical condition — come to work and engaged in the daily ritual of performing the essential elements of a Federal or Postal job, may need to consider adopting a different ritual: one that focuses upon one’s health and rehabilitation of one’s condition.

Federal Disability Retirement is an employment benefit that allows for ritualistic thinking to be reconsidered, and for the Federal or Postal worker who can no longer perform all of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, anymore, because of an ongoing, chronic or traumatic medical condition, it may be time to abandon those outdated rituals and consider preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, and rearrange the priorities that have been ordered from a past that is no longer relevant.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS & CSRS Medical Disability Retirement: Divided order

Most people are able to tolerate life’s bombardment of stresses by dividing them up, placing them into some semblance of order in priority of tackling them, and bifurcating the individual slices from the aggregate of the whole.  For, if you focus too much upon the forest, as opposed to the individual trees that provide markers for finding your way out, your will become overwhelmed and lost.

It is thus tantamount to the idea of a chaotic rationality, or a messy desk that is disorganized for anyone else but for the one who sits and works at the desk; no one can find anything when asked to look upon the messiness, but query the person who “owns” the desk and he can locate the document immediately.

Similarly, the divided order is where the stresses of life, the messes of living and the chaos of all that must be accomplished in the day-to-day discourse of an individual – from family obligations, work, leisure time, spending time with kids, making a living, paying bills, exercising, keeping up with one’s professional education and obligations – must all be “divided” in order to maintain some semblance of order, and the division itself must be done internally, mentally and within the sphere of private thoughts and unspoken actions; and it is out of the chaos of the world around that the order is imposed by the very division placed within the quietude of one’s consciousness.

Then, of course, complications can occur – that proverbial “last straw that broke the camel’s back” can come sauntering in the dead of night and bring about chaos where chaos once was bridled and restrained.

A medical condition can certainly do that.  For, in many ways, a medical condition is itself chaos defined.  It is an attack not only upon the body, but of the mind as well, and undermines a sense of balance, integrity of self, and self-confidence.

That is why 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 becomes an external imposition of an order divided from within.  It allows for a hopeful look into a future, where one may be able to escape from the chaotic darkness of the deepening morass arising from work, the problems of the Federal Agency or the U.S. Postal facility, and the constant struggle with pain, paranoia or uncontrollable anxiety; and replaces it with a retirement that allows for a basic annuity that extends until age 62, at which point it is recalculated into regular retirement.

A divided order is thus one more step that needs to be attained in attending to one’s medical condition, and preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application is often the first next step to reaching that goal.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: The pleasantry of paper’s caress

Will the electronic tablet ever replace paper’s longstanding sovereignty?  The invention, dissemination and widespread availability of paper was a notable mark in human progression — if only for what it allowed in establishing communication, transfusion of knowledge and conveyance of data.  Like Gutenberg’s movable type printing press, the cotton gin, the Model T Ford and the computer chip of modernity, such inventions became, in retrospect, tumultuous benchmarks of human advancement.  If advertising images reflect a hope of an industry, it is clear that paper’s replacement is a target of that sector.

The image to be replaced — of a carefree summer’s day, lost within the creative imaginings enchanted by a book in hand, is replaced in a meditative surrounding of a monastery of quietude, with a solitary figure with tablet in hand.  Is this a clash of non-conforming imagery, an oxymoron of the tactile senses — or an acceptable intrusion of an outdated perspective now carefully designed to allow for a transcendence beyond sensory inconsistency?

Is it too “weird” to claim that there is a synergy created by the connective tissues, perhaps invisible, in the sensation of bonds reinvigorated when the human organ — the skin which covers one’s hands and fingers — makes contact with the organic product once living in the forest of endless time before becoming transformed and processed into a breathing product of man-made paper?  As opposed to:  holding an electronic device encased in plastic — that dreaded construct of human creation that poisons the environment and resists natural disintegration for eons of man’s extinguished presence on civilization’s watch?

It is precisely that pleasantry of a tactile event — that moment unnoticed when lost in an author’s universe, when the hand feels for the edge of the paper, separates the singular from the aggregation of sequential binding, slides down and in a conjunctive movement of coordinated silence, turns the page.  And from that, idioms of meaningful adages — another page in history turned, entering a new chapter in one’s life, and closing the book on a forgettable chapter in the experiential history of a person; or even of throwing a book at or “booking” someone.  How will that tablet replace such evolutions of linguistic goldmines in the future?

What we unintentionally lose by careless neglect in the rush towards embracing newfangled inventions for monetary gain and lining of pockets in corporate boardrooms, we rarely pause to reflect upon, except in the incremental erasures of history’s richness in human interactions taken for granted but never spoken of.  There is, in rushing towards replacement with thoughtless disregard, a propensity to bury that which is seemingly irrelevant but for the empty chair we suddenly miss, but too late in showing our love and care.  We can regret things that are gone, but remain impotent to despair and unable to replace, once discarded into the ashes, with but a hope for the rise of Phoenix, if only in the timeless mythologies forever extinguished.

For the present, however, paper remains king; and whether by paper or in forms of electronic transmission, Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who need to prepare an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, must formulate a proper strategy and file the proper forms and “paperwork” in order to become eligible for Federal Disability Retirement benefits.  Such a submission must be accomplished within a specified statutory constraint, and the rise of electronic methodologies should not detract from the goal identified:  preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.

For, whether by the tactile pleasantry of paper’s caress, or via an electronic transmission, in this particular mode of presentation and submission, it is always the content which matters, and not the means of conveyance.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS & CSRS Medical Retirement: The things we leave for repair

What we attend to immediately; that which we procrastinate, and set aside; and, finally, the things we allow to falter, to deteriorate in a progressive decline of disrepair — slowly eroding, perceptibly corroding, a sight for sore eyes, as the proverbial adage goes.  And what if it is ourselves?

Of course, the cosmetic and physical fitness industry have cornered the market and turned selfishness into a virtue, and self-love into a cottage industry; something akin to, “If you don’t love yourself, how can you love others?” (or some such parallel inanity of vacuous nonsense as that); or even a better one:  Persuade the populace to eat more sugars and processed food, then blame them for nationwide obesity while simultaneously hooking everyone on the technological steroids of smartphones, computers and the acceptability of being couch potatoes; make sports into a spectator sport, video gaming into a money-generating interest, and all the while, open the floodgates of information dissemination and tell everyone how intelligent they are, or could be, because you need not memorize any facts or have the capacity to engage in critical thinking; no, you can always Google it if you need to know, and oh, by the way, a handful of individuals, unnamed, will control the bias of information on the Internet, Facebook and Twitter from which your feeds of knowledge derive.

Slowly, incrementally, rust forms on the edges of that which we leave for repair, with the admonition that we’ll “get around to it“, that priorities overshadow for the time present; and when we have more “free time”, we will attend to it.  If we counted up all of the seconds, minutes and hours promised by a new invention or a technological innovation, the aggregate would surpass the number of hours in a single day, and we should all possess the wealth of unlimited time.  But rust in the glint of morning sunshine reflects a glow of beauty nestled in the quietude of timelessness; of those things we leave for repair, it is that growing beauty which reflects our diminishing selves.

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 all of the essential elements of the Federal or Postal positional duties, the concept of leaving thing aside — important things — is well known and knowingly engaged.  For the work accomplished reveals the extent of self-denial; the “mission” of the agency, the volume of letters, parcels and packages to be processed at the expense of one’s own deteriorating health; the need to sacrifice for the good of the whole, at the expense of one’s own health.

In the end, for the Federal and Postal worker who comes to a point where preparing, formulating and 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 things that were left for repair are those which needed most that neglected attention; for it is the “I” disregarded, the “me” left behind despite the self-identification of a named generation, and the hollow and gaunt eyes looking back from the mirror of time, where we keep “doing for others” when the one we forgot about in the collection and vast array of the things we left for repair, calls in a desperate cry for the tools left rusting in the untouched toolbox of an undetermined future.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: Of that unanswerable question

Why?  Or, the one which all parents dread, Are we there, yet? (as asked not 2 minutes after the engine has been turned on in anticipation of a 10-hour trip).  There is, then, the question posed by Bertrand Russell, as to the meaning of language, its correspondence to the physical world around us, and whether a truth value can attach itself to statements which fail to reflect the reality surrounding: Is the present king of France bald? Or does he have a full head of hair? As the country is currently a republic, sans a recognized king, there can be no identifiable royal head, with or without a scalp’s landscape of cover crops.

Then, of course, there is the underlying motive hidden beneath or behind.  Is a rhetorical question a question at all?  For, if the proposed query is merely to emphasize a point, but never intended to elicit an answer, and yet asked in an accented manner and an enunciated tone such that there can be no doubt as to the grammatical form posited, is it the convention of usage which negates the form, or merely the self-evident proposition betrayed by the obviousness of the context asked?

And, what if the audience is predominantly of foreigners who speak the language with minimal proficiency?  Does lack of comprehending the nuances of what native speakers of the language would easily identify as a “rhetorical” question, nullify the nature of such a characterization merely by such failure of understanding, by one’s status as a foreigner, or is it completely and fully determined by the insular and unrevealed motive of the one who asks?  And if, of that person, we ask, “Did you mean the question to be one of a rhetorical nature?” — and the only response is a mysterious, unrecognizable smile, interpreted as either noncommittal or perhaps revealing vestiges of the insane — does it still make it so?

And what of the convoluted question, if there is no judge on the bench to direct the inquisitor to “rephrase the question”, as in: What time did you enter the victim’s home when you left your wet footprints on the white rug before you stepped on the tail of the poodle and waited before the dog yelped just as you plunged the knife for which you never said you were sorry, huh? “Huh” would be the correct response, of course, before the bench would ask for a rephrasing, or in anticipation of an objection to a “leading” question — but is not a “rhetorical” question one which is “leading”, also, and do the circumstances surrounding the query matter?  Does the fact that a leading question posed in a courtroom differ from one presented by a reporter during an interview, or by a parent to a child?

Often, questions tell more about the source than of the elicited destination.  When personal choices and private timings confer the greater influences upon the manner of the answer, the mere asking of the question may be an answer unto itself.

Thus, for Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are contemplating filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, the question posed is often: Is it time for me to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits?  Or, should I wait until the Agency or the U.S. Postal Service completely destroys any quality in my life? This latter question, of course, is what can be deemed a “rhetorical” question, whether English is a second-language or a first.

As for the one preceding — well, of that unanswerable question that only the questioner can know, the mere asking of the question is telling as to the questioning nature of the answer left unanswered, like the baldness of the present king of France and the fact that there is no judge in the courtroom of common sense to direct the questioner to rephrase a question which is quite obvious by the mere asking of that question.

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