Early Retirement for Injured Federal Employees
Remember the superstition of cracks in the sidewalk? How we used to avoid them for fear of calamity, and worse yet, of the hand that reaches from beneath the bed late at night when parents are fast asleep and the screams that curl the midnight silence may never be heard because the world is not quite what it appeared to be? Or, as we are walking along the normal route of direction, to get from point A to destination B, […]
How does one formulate “the argument”? Is it merely a reaction that comes naturally, like the person who has been tagged as one who is “constantly argumentative”? Do all arguments need to provide a foundation of rational discourse — of coherence within an invective of counter-statements, and structure countermanding a deterioration of civility? […]
This is a perilous time we live in. Some would counter that it all depends upon one’s outlook and perspective; that for those who have an adventuresome spirit, a sense of excitement for the future, and a fearless attitude in facing challenges, such times as these are for the bold and independent-minded. Youth, of course, has its advantages; having nothing to lose, they race blindly ahead without concerns for the consequences left behind. Nostalgia for a time gone can be infectious and wasteful; […]
Why is it that money taints with toxicity of motive? If a person does something with no compensatory demand, does that fact alone make it less suspect? Does the professional soldier who gets paid by one’s own country show a level of patriotism unblemished, but the one who hires out for monetary rewards by another, belie a code of honor? What gives the scent of blemish, the hint of a soul’s impoverishment, and the sullied character of an inner decay? Are we merely taught to remain in silent awe at the poor woman in the story of the miserly penny, and frown if a child […]
Time used to “march on”, and the pendulum swing was a metaphor which everyone understood. No more. The digital age of technological superiority has made such inane profundities left stacked upon the history of obsolescence. But for cherished grandfather clocks in hallways of mansions forgotten, or in the mysteries of worn novels where the tick-tock represented the anticipation of the sudden death scream; the slow, mechanical device which moves to and fro, left to right, right to left, and into the eternal progression of marked time, is but an irritant for the noise it makes. […]
Life requires acting; successful living demands thoughtful acts. Every good stage manager recognizes the signs; there are those who float through the script, with nary a cognitive engagement; others who involve themselves with an exhaustive turmoil of stipends unpaid; and still, those who think that talent alone will carry one through, despite the mediocrity which has surfaced unabashed, and where fingerprints left behind of tattered devastation betraying the lack of success. Do we ever really “get over” our own ignorance or arrogance? It is said that the two go hand-in-hand, like cousins […]
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? […]
There is, at the outset, a question as to whether such metaphysical distinctions of esoterica have any relevance, anymore. The ivory towers have all lost their sheen; civilizations have now embraced the comfort of relativism in the West, excepting those outliers who cling to antiquities of thought believed to merely be vestiges of a prehistoric era; and all such bifurcations of minutiae are considered mere word games designed to enhance and promote the ability and capacity for further social engineering. […]