Federal Employee Disability Retirement Program: Word Piles

The etymology connotes the Biblical narrative found in Genesis, generally referred to as the Tower of Babel; in that case, not of words, but of civilizations attempting to reach the heavens in order to breach the power of the universe. But Babel was more than the diaspora of a rebellious cabal of God’s children gathered to defy and deface; it had to do with evil, impure intent, and the conspiracy of human depravity in the face of a pure heaven and the violation of man’s sacrosanct relationship implicit after the metaphor of the Great Flood. […] Read More …

OPM Disability Retirement: The labyrinth of human psychology

Daedalus, in Greek mythology, constructed the complex maze for King Minos of Crete; it is reported that the multicursal patterns were so elaborate that even the designer himself could barely find a pathway out. That is, indeed, reflective of the complexity of human beings. Cynics are quick to dismiss our own species as predictable, untalented in any specific category but only in general terms; boastful beyond a simpleton’s ego and successful in self-promotion and propagation only because it is too lazy to do otherwise. […] Read More …

Federal & Postal Employee Disability Retirement: The carousel of life

It is the easiest of analogies to ponder: of a vision in the humdrum of circularity; different sizes, shapes, and images of artistry; of the choices we make and the alternatives offered; where we sit in life, of the approaches we take and the variable speed of the up and down motion; do we possess the fearless temerity to change midway from a lumbering, elephantine facade to the sleek and pathological ride of a cheetah? Does the music have the concordant synchronicity such that it is neither an annoyance nor a distracting disturbance? Or do we even take note of the loud cacophony of the blaring entourage, or merely as a backdrop to the excitement in the very ride we undertake? […] Read More …

FERS & CSRS Medical Disability Retirement: Language Decoupled

The correspondence theory of truth has long since been abandoned; whether by congruence or of fair representation, the classical model dating back to Plato and Aristotle has been replaced by Wittgenstein‘s description of “language games“, which really possesses no reflection upon the objective world which surrounds us “out there”. With the advent of virtual reality; the blurred distinction between truth and falsity as merely words in play; and Bertrand Russell’s playful destruction of any such theory […] Read More …

FERS Disability Retirement: The key to happiness

There are countless titles of books which predicate upon the presumptuous endeavor; palm readers who, for a prepaid fee, make their living from it; and wanderers who trek the Himalayas in search of it.  Others merely change the definition or meaning of what constitutes the achieved goal, or drink themselves silly when self-deception fails to fulfill.  […] Read More …

Medical Retirement for Federal Employees: The Future of Now

Human beings have the unlimited capacity of projecting into the future, such that a present picture of what may occur some time hence can be visualized; but whether and how many bring the future to the fore, such that the present becomes encompassed into the reflective reality of current circumstances, is of an imaginative rendering few take the time to engage in. By focusing upon the future as some ethereal fog somewhere in the distant netherworlds, we can justify the tendency to procrastinate and kick the proverbial can down the road; […] Read More …

OPM Disability Retirement: Fishes, Streams, Rivers and Ponds

They are, in the end, interconnected; yet the conceptual distinctions allow for separateness, such that we can value each independently. And much of the waterways which filter throughout the ecosystem remain invisible and underground, via caverns and unconfined aquifers; but that which we see with the naked eye, we assume to be the reality of the entirety of that which we hold to encompass the universe of our existence. […] Read More …

OPM Medical Retirement Law: How Does One Know the Age?

It cannot be by counting wrinkles, or the number of gray hairs; for, some people never develop them, and in any event, new methodologies of plastic surgery, hair dyes and other cosmetic creativities can easily override such superficial eruptions of telltale signs. Photographs can no longer be evidence of aging, for airbrushing and digital modifications can dispense with such irritating characteristics. […] Read More …

Federal Disability Retirement: Delaying the Inevitable

Projection of future events, anticipation of coming circumstances, and rumination upon conflicts yet to occur; these are very human experiences beyond mere base anxieties. Other primates may recognize and prepare to react to events about to develop, but the wide spectrum of time between the current state of affairs, and the projected future event, is perhaps the most telling factor in differentiating the complexity of human beings from other animals. […] Read More …

OPM Disability Retirement: Stages

Life brings about natural “stages” — paralleling certain age requirements, with subsets and parenthetical footnotes as to each. As the queried riddle posed by the Sphinx (“What has four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, three legs in the evening, and no legs at night?”) brings about clarity of identity, so the stages of life provide a glimpse into the inherent complexity of man’s psyche. […] Read More …