Early Retirement for Injured Federal Employees
It is a conundrum to speak in such terms; for, one must step outside of one’s being in order to reflect upon “living” as something separate and distinct from what one does within the insular consciousness of one’s life; and to learn the “lessons” of life, and to live such lessons, is to have the capacity for detachment from a third-person perspective and not to be lost in the first-person consciousness. […]
There is a recognition — born of the enlightenment period in American History referred to merely as “The Sixties” — when a cultural adage was created, which went something like: “Age is not the sequence of years, but of a state of mind”. Yes, those “Sixties” will one day be looked upon by historians and cultural commentators as that likened to “The Renaissance”, or “The Dark Ages”, or perhaps some other hiccup of historical divisions that bifurcates the “before” and “after” of enlightenment, […]
Later editions are never as valuable as the First Edition, unless of course something additional has occurred, like the author’s inscription and signature, or a typeset error which is limited in number, or perhaps a reissuance but for a “limited number”, and sometimes as an “anniversary” reprinting, especially and again, if the author or progenitor has signed such a copy. […]
Why confuse the confused? Why confuse further the confusion that already confused even the least of the confused? Why add to the confusion when the confused are confused enough as it is, and when confusion should be relieved by less confusion instead of confusing everyone further by adding to the confusion? […]
They all constitute the arena of “make-believe”. Yet, we excuse the first, ignore the second, and feel guilt and shame for embracing the third – or, at least some of us, do. Of fairytales, we share in the delight of passing on such tall tales of wonderlands and Eskimo nights full of shooting stars and talking Polar Bears; of mythologies, we recognize the need for lost civilizations to have embraced a means of explaining, but consider such trifles to be beyond the sophistication of modernity, and arrogantly dismiss such dusty irrelevancies as mere fodder for a fairytale told: […]
Will the electronic tablet ever replace paper’s longstanding sovereignty? The invention, dissemination and widespread availability of paper was a notable mark in human progression — if only for what it allowed in establishing communication, transfusion of knowledge and conveyance of data. Like Gutenberg’s movable type printing press, the cotton gin, the Model T Ford and the computer chip of modernity, such inventions became, in retrospect, tumultuous benchmarks of human advancement. If advertising images reflect a hope of an industry, it is clear that paper’s replacement is a target of that sector. […]
We take for granted much, and dismiss with careless appreciation the residue of crumbs begotten. The idiom that refers to the final straw which breaks a camel’s back — why does the foreign species have an impact upon a culture which is unfamiliar with such a beast of burden? Is it that, despite the images produced against the background of pyramids and pharaohs of a bygone civilization, the essence and theme of the proverbial statement resonates, whether replaced by a horse, a donkey or an ox? […]
Once achieved, death destroys; it is the anomaly of life, that the linear progression leads toward its own terminus, and by slow and incremental degeneration, its own vivacity is defined by a sense of self-immolation. The realization of attainment almost always occurs upon surpassing the apex of an ordering of one’s life, and so the inevitable decline necessarily diminishes any joy derived from self-reflection of having achieved that balance and order for which we strive. […]