Early Retirement for Injured Federal Employees
The metaphorical image representing such a phrase allows one to pause and reflect: the dichotomy between the physical world and the conceptual one — of a person “hanging”, as from a cliff, with his fingers turning white from gripping the tenuous life-line of a flimsy branch, a loose boulder or an outstretched hand of another; and of the technical term that possesses meaningful discourse […]
It is as if we hold, within the inner eye of one’s consciousness, a fading photograph of an innocent, pure child – that child we remember before… Before what? Perhaps, the breaking up of a romanticized recollection of an intact home; or a period of natural rebelliousness marking a distancing from the carefree hugs, kisses and unselfconscious holding of hands, […]
There are people who, by their very carriage, command respect and deference; it is like the royal crest without intimate knowledge of lives or spoilage in whispers behind shuttered windows – it is just presumed. Does man possess a latent dignity beyond the carrion of an eagle’s flight? Are we, indeed, just below the angels, and above the fray of predatory delights? […]
Despite evidence to the contrary, we tend to live life expecting disaster just around the next corner; and when it does happen, of course, it only confirms the greatest fears which we had anticipated all along. Whether any singular calamity is merely a magnification of our expectation of life’s fragile coordinates of unfairness, or simply a reflection of truth in an objectively impassive and uncaring world, it is our sense of destiny left to the fates of gods who care not and submission to the evolutionary Darwinism of predatory-to-prey beliefs which obviates any residual joy of life. Then, when a wrong turn is made, we shake our heads knowingly and whisper in a soliloquy of wisdom unconstrained, […]
Procrastination is the bane of progress; by delaying and kicking the proverbial can down the road, the chances of decreasing one’s odds of accomplishment become magnified exponentially. What is the reasoning behind inaction and inertia? Human life must by necessity involve movement and progress; for, unlike other species who find the immediacy of satisfaction and gratification to be the basis of existential justification, we bring to the fore the coalescence of one’s memory of where we came from; a future hope of where we want to go; and in combing the […]