FERS Disability

Last Updated on June 23, 2016 by FERS Disability Attorney

To state that, because something has happened, it was fated to happen, is to merely confess a tautology of meaningless repetition; and so there must be more to it than what the words themselves seem to logically undermine.  Thus, when Cassius lamented to Brutus that men at times “are master of their fates; the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings,” he was referring to the clash between human will and the predetermination of events already set, and despite our best efforts, our condemnation by force of will, it is our own pathos that evinces tragedy.

From Classical Greek mythologies to Heraclitus and beyond, the one constant throughout is that, like the river which ever flows and shifts to erode the currency in time, there is little that we can do to forego the fated intersection of lives.

The people we sit beside in school, whether we reach out to make friends or ignore in silent disdain; the lives we impact, whether by choice or by unintended disregard; it is because we cannot live in seclusion and the profound truism of John Donne’s poetry that, indeed, the bell tolls not for everyone else, but specifically for each person, that hamlets and hermitages abound in defiance of fated encounters.

That loneliness and sense of abandonment by all around, is never more powerful than when a person is beset with a medical condition, and suddenly it is as if one is either a martyr or a person shunned for contracting leprosy; either way, the doom of fate and the promising stars have banished any history of meaningful contributions previously attributable.

For the Federal employee and U.S. Postal worker who suffers 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 the Federal position or Postal craft, the sense that the Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service will not be supportive of a filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, is not just a mere chimera based upon unfounded psychosis; it is, instead, a very real dilemma.

And that is where fate, will and intersecting lives must be deliberatively evaluated and carefully analyzed; for, who is informed, at what point, and when to speak words of intended acts, may govern the future course of an Agency’s reactive motive.  For, the Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker, whether under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the time has clearly come when one may well believe that fated lives intersecting must be viewed not merely as a tautology of inane beliefs, but where careful scrutiny must be engaged in so that the stars do not interfere in the playful laughter of gods and karma, in the effective preparation, formulating and filing of a Federal Disability Retirement application.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire