Today’s world is a curious, sometimes comic, sometimes tragic theatre.

Armed with technology that can summon the sum of human knowledge, teenagers still ask for directions to a football stadium, unable to use the Google Maps app in their hands.

In the same breath, their peers bicker over the difference between a province and a state, while the old stereotype that Africa is a country stubbornly persists. Geography, it seems, is now a matter of opinion, not fact.

This is not just about maps or missed turns. It’s about a deeper disconnection- a world where opportunism is as common as sparrows (“stads mussen”) and as expected as a tradesman’s hustle in an African market. The survival instinct is alive, but the sense of place and history is fading.

Nowhere is this erosion more poignant than in the shifting currents of family. I think of the son who hovers over his mother, once a vibrant woman who lived, danced, and laughed with abandon-even if sometimes “drunk as a skunk.” Now, under the weight of her “well-meaning” controlling offspring, she sits heavier, greyer, her spark dimmed.

When I asked him if he wanted her to go “straight and healthy to her grave,” he faltered, briefly glimpsing the cost of his caution before retreating to the comfort of control. The children, it seems, are not always the inheritors of wisdom-they can be its jailers.

And so, the world from tomorrow will be run by those who today cannot distinguish villages from provinces and provinces from states. They will inherit our systems, institutions, and rituals while understanding little of how they truly work. The machinery of society will be in the hands of those who can operate smartphones but not compasses, who can recite slogans but not histories.

Yet, amid this fog, there are flashes of courage. For example, a judge in Wisconsin (Hannah Dugan) sacrificed her own standing by ruling against the powers that be, not for glory but so that people might finally acknowledge truths they already sensed. Her act stands as a rare monument to integrity in a landscape of complacency.

Contrast this with the spectacle of people defending the banking system against an individual who merely exploited its mistakes. On LinkedIn, I watched commenters leapt to the defence of institutions that have repeatedly abused their trust rather than applauding someone who simply played by the absurd rules of a broken game. In our confusion, we mistake honesty for honour and honour for obedience.

After chewing on all this absurdity, I rang my daughter off on a train to King’s Day in Amsterdam with her Australian friend to tell her about the scene I’d just witnessed: the once-iconic lady now sidelined by her own son, a self-appointed virtue warden who’d rather see his mother “behaving” than living.

I made it very clear: if she ever tries to turn me into a “good girl” at nearly eighty, I’ll haunt her with every ounce of mischief I’ve got left. Let the world breed its sleeze ball sons and worship sanitised old age. I’ll stick with living, not languishing. Thank you very much.

So here’s to life: may we live it with honour, cultivate truly healthy habits (not just sanitised and joyless), and let energy flow. May our pursuit of well-being embrace pleasure and wisdom as we each walk our yellow brick road in search of a brain and a heart worth having.

In a world where memory is fading, where the map is not the territory, and where the rules are rewritten daily, let us at least strive to live with curiosity, courage, and the irrepressible spark that makes us human. Long live the quest. Long live the questions. And long live those who dare to dance, even when the music changes.

Long live the King of the Netherlands! (and those celebrating life)

May Harmony find you,

Irena Phaedra

P.S. So here we are, on the road again, maps in hand, wisdom in question, a little lost but never standing still. As The Doors might say, “Keep your eyes on the road, your hands upon the wheel.” The journey’s the thing, and the best travellers are those who know the road itself is the real destination.

P.P.S “On the road again-because, as Morrison warned, ‘The future’s uncertain and the end is always near.’ But what’s a journey without a little uncertainty, a little music, and a few strange companions along the way?”