I tried not to give away the plot in this post, but I will make a disclaimer to proceed with caution.

What if I were to tell you that the life you have isn’t your real life? You’ve placed yourself in a box of a life where you are comfortable because every day of your life is predictable. You go to the same office, talk to the same people, and do the same work. What if I told you there was more? What if there were more places you could visit, more people you could love, and more experiences than you do daily? Life can be more expansive than the limitations you impose on yourself. All this could be yours. All you have to do is die.

“Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.”
— Matthew 10:39

In our bodies, we yearn for more. We know it exists but are too afraid to enter this unknown. In just about all of our major religions, the idea of death isn’t a negative thing. It’s actually a doorway into a more fulfilling, everlasting life. In Christianity, the afterlife is heaven or a place of perfect union with God. In Islam, The Qur’an describes Jannah (Paradise). This is a place of unimaginable beauty and eternal peace. Buddhism speaks of the state of Nirvana, in which one is free from desire, fear, and ego illusions. The same concept can be found in Hinduism.

With all these beliefs and billions of people practicing these religions, why is there still a fear of death? Despite all these traditions, there is no physical proof of an afterlife. One must rely on their faith to believe there is more out there than just this. Not only does it take immense faith, but systems are in play that deter us from acknowledging that there’s more to life in the here and now. For the purpose of this article, let’s call this system Lumon.

The Choice of Security Over Freedom

From the outside, Lumon looks like a cold and controlling corporation. However, the innies who work underground only have one perspective of this company, and it’s the perspective that’s fed to them. We must remember that an innie has no reference to the outside world. In a world that may or may not be vast, Lumon provides a place for structure, routine, and a clear sense of purpose. In other words, innies aren’t expected to think because everything they perceive to need is given to them through the corporation, including their identity. With the entire universe closed off, there’s an illusion everything they need is right where they are.

The need for security is not far off from how we live today. Most of us give our identities away to the work we do. As a result, we try to do our best at our jobs, sometimes not because we like what we do, but if we lose our jobs, we lose our identities. It’s very hard to break free from the mundane because we are not given a concrete alternative (much like the idea of heaven) where we know that we will be okay if we let go of this attachment. If there are rounds of layoffs and we are affected, we didn’t just lose our jobs… we lost meaning.

I don’t mean to just narrow this down to work, but I think the show creators have realized that work is the perfect metaphor for what we know. We tend to cling to what we know, fearing what we do not know. As an innie with no context of the outside world, there’s no guarantee that life outside the office will be better.

And so we do the same thing, fearing to quit because there’s no guarantee that life will be better, not taking that new job in another state or country because there’s no guarantee that life will be better, or crying on our deathbed. After all, there’s no guarantee that life will be better. What if I do the new thing and the outcome is worse than today? It’s the uncertainty that keeps us paralyzed from opportunity. It’s the same uncertainty used to manipulate, control, and keep us compliant.

Living in a Society of Control

Lumon controls every aspect of an innie’s life. However, the innie does not perceive control because it’s their only perspective. There’s no true idea of what freedom looks like beyond the walls of their office because the office is all they know. Yet, strangely, this control can be comforting. It relieves the burden of choice. There is nothing to figure out because all is done for them. All an innie has to do is the work given to them. They are told what to do, what to feel, and what to believe. If we’re being honest, this dynamic is no different than a parent/child dynamic in which a child must follow the parent’s rules to live under one’s roof. Do as I say, and you will be safe.

Incentives and Rewards

And then you have the false sense of reward to compensate for our lack of freedom. In Severance, they have awkward dance parties, waffles, and finger traps. In our “real” world, we have the illustrious pizza party. These perks reinforce a false sense of progress and reward. We believe we are doing something important but can’t derive meaning. We work with numbers and call it important. Severence portrays it as random numbers on a computer console. We see it as revenue, expenses, and data (don’t get me started on data). Do these numbers truly have meaning, or is it just our job to herd these meaningless numbers into boxes of perceived value?

Yet, the sense of working towards a goal, especially collectively, stops us from questioning what that goal actually means. It stops us from questioning the system. The collective goal of selecting a president rewards us when our candidate wins but also stops us from questioning his politics or the political system as a whole. The collective goal of finding a spouse stops us from questioning our perception of love… Yes, it’s much bigger than work.

When Things Start to Crack

Everything outside of us tells us to stay put, but this little thing called intuition wants to creep out. This voice within us is trying to remind us that there is more. Each character goes through their iteration of realizing that what they’ve been told is at least not the full truth. The mystery of life is trying to pull them into the unknown even though the forces of Lumon reward or punish this spirit out of them.

“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
— Rumi

The same can be said in our everyday life. I know I’ve asked plenty of times if there is more than there is to life than sitting at a computer under fluorescent lighting. We have our routines that allow us to go on autopilot, not knowing that we are becoming the robots that we fear would take our jobs. Yet there are times when a built-up, suppressed emotion flows through us, pleading that we wake up. It’s a spiritual yearning that holds a greater truth. A greater truth can be found anywhere, not just in religion. It can be found in a book, a conversation, or even watching a show like Severance.

What is Faith?

This is the importance of faith. Faith has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with trusting that the universe has your back. The truth is that there’s no such thing as certainty. Answers to our questions come in the form of glimpses, not fully fledged, throughout manuals. Intuition will always be subtle. It becomes our responsibility to take action without knowing if things will come out well, whatever well is.

In our logical world, the need to act on evidence is the very thing that limits our potential. Sometimes, the actions we take do not make sense. If we come to this crossroads, we must detach ourselves from the outcomes of our actions because what we think of as “good” is merely an outcome meeting our expectations. Our expectations then become our limitations.

A Time for Living and a Time for Dying

Don’t worry; the death I was referring to was not physical, even though it may feel like it. Physical death is the ultimate form of what’s needed for us to fulfill our wholeness and reach a greater truth. We live in a world in which we aren’t fulfilled until we acquire and gain something, yet many of our spiritual practices don’t emphasize gain but letting go. We mean letting go of ego, attachment, control, desire, and false identity. Buddha said that the root of suffering is attachment, and Jesus said it was hard for the rich man to see the Kingdom of Heaven. These are all things the world and Lumon use to place us in a box of false significance.

Nothing truly matters at Lumon. Nothing is truly real. The work is mysterious yet important. Let’s just say that their job is meaningless to rip off the bandaid. The rewards for their work are artificial and are used to promote compliant actions rather than meaningful progress. It’s a workplace driven by desire. In this fabricated world, people desire approval, much like Milchik desired approval during his performance review. There is a desire for comfort, structure, routine, and meaning in an overall meaningless configuration. Lumon provides all, yet something within the innies knows it’s insufficient. Are you starting to draw similarities?

The Greatest Form of Love is Detachment

For one to live, one must die. Die of these attachments. In the case of the innies, one must die from the label of the compliant worker, die from the dependency of Lumon’s structure, and die from the illusion of who they are when they are at work. Only then can an innie know their true self. This is a death because it hurts like Neo unplugging from the matrix. Many of us don’t want to know the benefits of freedom because the path to freedom comes with many jagged stones.

We create our identities based on external factors such as job titles, roles, accomplishments, and habits. Then we suffer from them because none of these things last. This identity is unstable and requires a lot of maintenance or control so that none of these things slip into the unknown. A job title means nothing if we are laid off, so we do all we can to keep our identity in our work or whatever else we believe gives us our sense of worth.

“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.”
— Lao Tzu

To move into what we believe to be paradise, we have to eliminate the things that cause our suffering. This should be common sense. For me to be in Florida, I must first leave California. In the spiritual sense, this means letting go of my desire to control, my dependency on someone, some corporation, or some object for me to feel worthy, and the false narratives given to me while growing up.

Again, this feels like death because we feel like we are losing ourselves, but truly, we are shedding who we are, even if there is no guarantee of knowing who we are. We must remember that paradise, wholeness, meaning, or whatever you’d like to call it doesn’t come from fighting the system (Lumon) but from surrendering to what is not Lumon—surrendering to the unknown. Each and every single one of us has a choice to make.

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