Early Retirement for Injured Federal Employees
It is hard enough to keep things together without those “extras” impeding, interrupting and infringing upon one’s time. Then, when that proverbial “straw that broke the camel’s back” is placed before us, a sense of doom and gloom (another trite, overused and ineffective phrase that is applied as a euphemism to conceal the crisis-point of our existence) pervades and blankets, […]
In life, inertness is considered “bad”; it is progress, the ascent of man and the constant striving towards attaining and achieving which are considered “good”. “Growth” and the incessant need to extend, expand and extoll the virtues of acquisition and accomplishment remain the medals of success; and whether we agree with such values, it is as if we never had a choice. […]
Perhaps the most venerated of the Greek deities; but why? As protector of young girls, the Greek mythological figure is always associated with the hunt, carrying with her a bow and arrow, accompanied by a loyal deer; is it chastity and fidelity that make her so attractive? Do we have an Artemis for our Age — someone whom we can look up to, to feel the warmth of love and pure presence, if only to provide comfort in times of turmoil? […]
It is the latter that gives rise to the former; and the former that remains forlorn and tattered until the latter begins to take shape. Hope without its latter partner, a Plan, is like the proverbial boat without a rudder; drifting amiss amidst the torrential currents of directionless pathways, being guided throughout by the vicissitudes of uncertainty. […]
We often hear of various events or transactions in the public arena where a “statement” will be issued, and such a conveyance of information is often prepared, pre-written, read from a piece of paper or plastered upon a teleprompter where the delivering individual merely reads from a text that has been previously written and composed. […]
Does a formula, a paradigm or a standard instill in us the direction we so desire? How is it that we compare X to something, and is the contrast a necessary prerequisite to achieving and accomplishing, or is that some artificial, societal construct that we have manufactured in order to sell ourselves a “bill of goods”? Yes, yes – Western Civilization (remember that middle-school subject taught under the general aegis of that title?) always begins with the philosophical precept of Aristotle’s, of “First Principles” and the “causes” of events and occurrences, but where is it stated that we must have a “measure” by which to compare and contrast? […]
What is the greatest fear? Is it to be forgotten, cast aside, without a mere footnote in the linear history of societal acknowledgments? Must society now adjust to the credited observation of Warhol’s dictum, that fame’s span of 15 minutes is too lengthy, given the fast-paced nature of modern technology? Is watching one’s self in a public forum the satisfying conduit for vicarious living, such that it makes content the populous who would otherwise revolt in the disparity of despairing livelihoods? […]
It is a purgatory of sorts; of the netherworld where twilight is a constancy of confusion, and when neither dawn nor dusk, between summer and winter, or of cognitive clarity and conundrums of confusion reach the pinnacle of an infinite maze. Do we prefer clarity to confusion, or the light of dawn to a period “just before”, when consciousness of thought is suppressed or prevented by a darkness befalling thoughtful perspectives impeded by streams of dancing oracles upon a seamless stupor? […]
One could easily spend a lifetime on each, separately; of the first in the trilogy, he mercifully died before the advent of the industrial revolution, whence he may have witnessed even greater upheavals of economic unrest and labor turmoil; of the latter two, they were contemporaries who followed divergent paths — with Salinger left in the hermitage of his insular world of fears, paranoia and distrust of a world which had offered only experiences which validated such churning for a tortured soul, and for Capote, a premature death prompted by a life of public destruction. […]
If wisdom is the collective knowledge, information and experience of a culture, then the loss, refusal or rejection of such historical amassing of purposive accrual of cognitive aggregation would result in the disintegration of a cohesive identity. Foolishness can therefore be defined as the state of reinventing the wheel at every turn, […]