I hate to be a cynic, despite the fact that I would like to think that we are all in this journey of life together and that we all lookout for one another, but I also have to live in reality rather than fantasyland.
There is of course a sizable portion of the population who do care for the farewell of others and not just out for themselves, but unfortunately there are also a lot of people who don’t much care about anyone but themselves and those who are close to them. I call it the “not in my backyard” syndrome.
For example, everyone agrees that public safety is important to a community. No one would want to live in a community that didn’t have a police force, firefighters or ambulance service near them. Understanding that we can all agree on that, the problem is that while people want public safety entities to protect them they also don’t want to be disturbed by them. It happens often within city government meetings when a decision needs to be made of where to put a new public safety facility. Keep in mind, public safety vehicles have bright lights and loud sirens, so no one is too eager to be living next to a fire station at 3 a.m. when the trucks roll out of the station. Many people who have to live with occasional 3 a.m. wakeup calls due to blaring sirens, understand it is for a common good. The person who petitions the city government about moving a public safety facility too close to their home are living in a self absorbed “not in my backyard” world.
These are the same types of people who have a flawed sense that they are entitled more than others. This happens sometimes in the world of Social Security disability. There are many people who may believe rhetoric they’ve heard that people who are on Social Security disability are lazy people who do not want to work. Opinions quickly change though if a person from the “not in my backyard” community suffers an injury or are diagnosed with impairments that prevent them from working. Many times people like this are only concerned about Social Security disability when they need it for themselves.
The perception of the types of people who apply for Social Security disability can be quite deceiving. Those who suffer injuries or impairments and become unable to work fall into all sorts of different societal categories.
There are people who are in their 20s, 30s and 40s who have a limited work history who suffer from severe mental health issues such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and debilitating depression and anxiety. If you’ve never experienced such impairments it may be difficult to understand how impossible it would be to get through one day of work even with the proper care and medications.
There are people in their 50s who have worked physically demanding jobs their entire life and now they are paying the price and suffer from arthritis, degenerative disc disease and neuropathy running through their entire body.
Although we have many clients who are younger who have limited work history and others who are aging blue collar workers, we also have clients who had high-earning white collar jobs, but suffered cognitive injuries related to some sort of accident and are no longer able to function in the workplace. We even represent former professional athletes, many from the NFL, who spent years trying to remain on the team and on the field even though they suffered numerous concussions because if they didn’t in the NFL it is next man up. Most of these players are largely forgotten once they can no longer strap on the helmet. These former players are now dealing with cognitive issues, memory issues and severe depression, not to mention the physical impairments they suffered from like broken bones, separations and tendon tears. Remember, the next time you hear someone make a judgment on a person who is applying for disability wonder to yourself if they would make that same judgment if it happened “in their backyard?”
