Early Retirement for Injured Federal Employees
Are such “feelings” valid? Does it even make any sense to apply the criteria of validity to a “feeling”, or are there circumstances where a foreboding sense of things can be accepted as a confirmed truth? Does an outcome-based application of the criteria determine the validity of a feeling? […]
What constitutes “thought” and fails to satisfy the allegation that one has not engaged in it? Take the following example: A young man who is courting a young woman buys a bouquet of flowers on his way home, but stops by at her place just to say hello. She — seeing the flowers — declares, “Oh, how thoughtful of you.” He sheepishly smiles and nods his head, but in reality the flowers were to spruce up his own apartment. […]
In most cases, it is not as dramatic a moment as we all tend to think; it is rarely “The X”, as in the penultimate juncture of enlightenment where the “The” is prefatory to the noun, as opposed to a more general article such as, “A realization” — meaning, one among others, or just another one amidst many. Most such moments are not “Aha” ones, where there is a sudden and profound revelation, like the proverbial Road to Damascus experience […]
Can a footman in former times, or a scullery maid while scrubbing the floors, experience envy when class structures forbade any hope of advancing beyond? In days before of rigid demarcations of social and class differentiations, where terms in modernity like “upward mobility” or “moving up the ladder” (have you ever wondered at the condescending connotation of such terms, where “up” is the direction of the movement, as if one were ascending to the heavens, even when such barometric activity often corresponded to moral degradation and sacrifice of one’s character?) were unheard of, […]
Each of us carries a narrative within; the David Copperfield segment of our otherwise unrevealed lives. It is who we are; the past that enlivens or diminishes; the memories of yesteryear or just a fortnight ago; and it resides continually until that day of atonement or the diminishment though dementia of fated unkindness. What we say; how it is written; how it is related through the handed-down oral traditions of storytelling and bemused tales of a Dickensian happy endings (excepting Little Nell and other debatable few unnamed); and how it is told, in what manner, with what punctuations and unctuous phraseology applied; these matter, especially when others are listening. […]
Many call in a frenzy of confusion, admitting openly of being lost and not knowing where to begin. That is always the starting point, as even Socrates conceded — of the hope of knowledge beginning upon a recognition of not knowing (though, if one looked carefully and scrutinized the face and eyes of the old sage, […]
The bifurcation of our lives is a habit of accepted normative behavior; for most, it is the simple divide between one’s personal life and professional endeavors; then, there are sub-categories of complicated spectrums, where criminal activity is pigeonholed from a daytime semblance of respectability, or deviant behavior is concealed from one’s reputation and facade of societal refinement. Those separations make for ease of transition, or used to. […]