From German generals to quantum thinking, how old power games and new festivals reveal the absurdity of living by yesterday’s labels.

“So, what do you do for a living?”
It’s the kind of question that says more about the asker than the asked, polite little probe for status, intelligence, and, ultimately, whether you’re worth their time. For those of us who’ve lived a few lifetimes in one-horse trainer, sand sculptor, desk jockey, crowd-pleaser, leg model, sunset model, restaurant owner, columnist, wine bar owner, project manager, mother, grandmother, a question that defies a tidy answer. How, exactly, does one fit a kaleidoscope into a cardboard box?

Society, of course, loves its boxes.
Anthropologically speaking, it’s an ancient habit: categorise, simplify, control. Europe is no different. For generations, we’ve been obsessed with binaries- friend or foe, East or West, ally or enemy. We built entire world orders on the premise that everything could be sorted, labelled, and filed away. The Dutch, pragmatic as ever, learned to live and trade in the in-between, but even we were not immune to the comfort of clear lines.
And now, here we are: a German general, André Denk, heading up the European Defence Agency.

For anyone with a memory longer than a TikTok video, this kind of historical irony makes you pause mid-sentence. The nation once cast as the existential threat is now the trusted guardian of the continent’s safety. Europe’s identity, like my CV, refuses to be summed up in a single headline. The old boxes are buckling.

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic and somewhere east, the US and Russia are still playing the old game. Their rivalry is the last great binary, echoing a world that insists on clear enemies and simple stories. They stride onto the stage expecting applause, but the audience has largely moved on-busy as we are with the messier, more interesting business of living in a multipolar world.

Take the Sunrise Festivals- one in Australia, one in Poland.
On the surface, they couldn’t be more different: one celebrates entrepreneurial spirit, the other a euphoric communion of music and community. Yet both are rituals of coming together, spaces where categories dissolve and new connections form. They are Europe, and perhaps the world, in miniature: plural, untidy, and alive with possibility.

So, what do you do for a living?
The only honest answer now is: I live. And in living, I refuse to be boxed in by job titles, history, or the binaries that no longer serve us.

After all, if we can invent a quantum computer machine that laughs in the face of binary logic, where bits exist in superposition and entanglement, would we let ourselves be entertained by two rusted powers still running on Cold War code?
The future belongs to those who think in quantum terms: those who hold multiple truths, embrace entanglement and let old narratives collapse under their own irrelevance. The rest? Let them error out. We have a sunrise to catch.

May Harmony find you,

Irena Phaedra

P.S. And honestly, if Joost Klein can collaborate with Martin Garrix in Shanghai, blending genres, cultures, and expectations on a global stage, what excuse do we have for clinging to the old scripts? The world is remixing itself in real-time, and the headliners aren’t waiting for permission from yesterday’s gatekeepers. If that’s not a sunrise worth dancing to, what is?