Early Retirement for Injured Federal Employees
The “full” adage, of course, is that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and connotes the idea that the interaction of the various components or elements constitute, in their entirety, a greater effect and impact than the efficacy of quantifying the singular components in their individual capacities added merely together. […]
One may never be able to pinpoint the precise time of day, the hour or minute that it occurred; but at some point, it developed, matured and became a certainty. It is that mysterious spark or connection that occurs in every relationship, whether between members of the same species, or even of other ones; of that mysterious spark that elevates a relational connection to one not merely encompassing casual friendship, but of a special, […]
We hear all the time about the shrinking world, the smaller universe, the global village – all metaphors to help and understand, to comprehend and be able to withstand within the insanity of a world that continues to intrude, intersect and impose itself upon every corner and aspect of lives lived and daily interrupted. It is a way for people to cope with the fact that we can no longer avoid the reality of those intersecting connections from worlds, […]
Observe the animals excluding the human one; what do they all do, except perhaps the male lion who awaits the predatory prowess of the lioness and her cubs who hunt for the royal crown; and the rest, of constant pecking, searching, laboring just to survive. Nature’s law requires survival; survival mandates predatory consumption; the rest look out that they are not in the sequence of a food chain that includes one’s self. For, it is the resting bird, the supine squirrel and the slumbering rabbit that becomes the meal of Nature’s law. […]
The herd mentality must of necessity have a survivability factor; otherwise, there is little to explain the illogical repetition of the historical recurrence of human folly for behavioral anthropology. In the modern era, being “different” is a sign of rebellion, and the cultural tidal wave of the Sixties in altering the normative landscape of music, art, religion and social customs, revealed the pinnacle of self-destructive behavior — until it became clear that being a misfit itself was merely the convention. […]
We all engage in it; it is the genre of modernity by which one values and estimates. With the shrinking world through sharing of information in this technological age, the greater minds have proposed that poverty can be erased and world hunger can be eradicated. But in the reality of the microcosmic world of daily living, it has allowed everyone to peer into the living rooms of all, and in the process, the heightened camaraderie through shared information has become exponentially magnified. […]
Sometimes, it is a gnawing sense; other times, a faint murmur whispering a warning of wayward paths impending upon the precipice of time, urging one to consider a different trail to take; but more often, it is not the distant sound of the mountains which we fail to consider; rather, it is that we selectively hear, but deliberately ignore. Medical conditions tend to betray us; they do not provide the subtlety of quiet and gentle reminders, and when they do, the progressive nature of the drumbeat of persistent pain, chronicity of signs, and incessant expansion […]
Overused words lose their intended efficacy. Perhaps the point of decay came about when the (unnamed) fast-food company decided to combine the word with the term, “meal”, and thereafter kids, grandkids and celebrity popularization effectively killed the last semblance of meaning. But when watching the exuberance exhibited by a puppy, where commonplace activities are engaged in with reactive and unbounded energy, it is appropriate and meaningful to compound the two, and ascribe the descriptively emotive, “happy puppy“. Whether it is the latter term which enlivens the former, or vice versa, […]
Is there a limit to the capacity for a draught animal that engages in the heavy toil so assigned? Like the proverbial reed of hay which breaks the camel’s back, what is the limit, the absolute capacity, the outer stretches of what the psyche can absorb, the ultimate strain upon the human physical endurance and the will to survive; until the beast of burden crumples upon an exhausted heap of fatigue and loss of hope, a broken mass of bones, organic matter and mindless assemblage of shattered void?