OPM Medical Retirement: Living “As If”

We all engage in it; it is a pastime, of sorts, which is enjoyed by the multitude, and reveals the imaginative capacity of the human animal, but with lingering questions concerning the evolutionary viability and purpose as to the utility of the need. James Thurber’s “Walter Mitty” (the full title of the short story, which first appeared in The New Yorker in 1939, is “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”) relished the inherent escapism provided by the contrasting chasm between the monotony and oppressive reality of daily living in comparison to the far reaches of one’s imagination, thereby revealing the unconstrained heights of the human mind. […]

 
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OPM Disability Retirement: Concealment through Repetition

It is often through mindless repetition that concealment of truth can be accomplished, and with insidious efficiency. For, repetition of tasks; redundancy of toil; convenience of engagement in life’s duties and obligations without thoughtful input; these can all be performed in monotonous automation without the participation of the one true essence of human uniqueness […] Read More …

OPM Disability Retirement: Accommodations and the Elegance of the Hedgehog

A French film (The Hedgehog) loosely following upon the novel (The Elegance of the Hedgehog), focuses upon the hidden life of an unnoticed individual, and through her providing a platform of unraveling the fears, aspirations, class differences and how we treat […] Read More …

Federal Worker Disability Retirement: The Paradoxical Soiling of Sacrament

Can a person enter a religious institution (i.e., a church, a mosque, a synagogue, etc.) without an intent to worship, but merely as an onlooker, and yet assume the role of a congregant without soiling the sacrament of its grounds? Tourists do that all the time, and perhaps […] Read More …

Federal Disability Retirement: The Price of Good Intentions to Deceive

Can one possess good intentions to deceive? Such a paradoxical claim would normally constitute what is commonly referred to as an oxymoron, as the concept of “good” would countermand the opposing construct of deception. Thus, it is not the intention itself which […] Read More …

Federal Disability Retirement: The Cost of a Veil

Veils are meant to conceal, either in part or in full; and the color of such concealment is of significance to indicate the state of sacrament or ceremony. Apart from religious significance and communicated traditions, however, most veils themselves are neither visible […] Read More …