The Wisdom of Aramis

By Elia Pekica Pagon

The new book of essays by poet and publicist Elia Pekica Pagon titled The Wisdom of Aramis talks about real-life treasures as opposed to false ones. It emphasizes all that really matters in life through simple truths from our everyday lives. The Wisdom of Aramis provides us with profound messages drawn from the lessons we can learn from our best friends and most devoted companions, our furry angels. It is a book dedicated to the author’s beloved pug, Aramis Giving of Good, who will always stay in her heart and who will fill the hearts of the readers with such a great sentiment of love, peace, tolerance, and compassion. The book talks about the joy of unconditional love, about deep compassion and inner peace, about the importance of acceptance and sincere kindness, about the magic of patience and miraculous coincidences. The book gives us the chance to discover a better world and a better version of ourselves through our self-awareness through which we can truly get to know ourselves, find our place in this world and beyond, and live in perfect harmony with nature and the entire universe. There is so much to learn from our pets. Everything we love about them is what we miss most in our lives, and that is true friendship—a pair of sincere eyes, a face without a social mask, someone to be here for us when no one else is, someone to understand us and love us unconditionally. We enjoy their company because they help us be who we really are, and they teach us how to enjoy our lives and this world in such a lovely way. Our beloved companions help us find our inner peace, and that’s exactly how we can establish universal peace—by bringing peace into our lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Dec 12, 2018
• ISBN: 9781982217471

Elia Pekica Pagon

Elia Pekica Pagon is a well-known author from Croatia, who has been writing from her early age. Elia acted in many commercials from 1977 till 1990. She travelled a lot and studied in Croatia, Italy and the United Kingdom and obtained the title of Mag. educ. philol. angl. And Mag. educ. philol. ital. After finishing her studies she taught English at Agora - college for market communications and worked for several multinational companies, such as British Airways where she worked as Sales and Marketing Executive, Hill and Knowlton where she worked as Public Relations Manager, Baxter (crisis management) and Marks and Spencer (introducing the company to the Croatian market). She owned her own company in Croatia and was the Chief Editor of two specialized magazines for marketing and the culture of communication. She published three books of poetry, five books of essays and a book of her interviews with the prominent people of our time from all around the world and from all walks of life. Among the people she interviewed were Noam Chomsky, Milton Glaser, Joel Bakan, Don George, Peter Eastway, Michael Coyne, Jan Currie, Isha Judd, Wolf Heydebrand, Jeffrey Hart, George Campbell, Livio de Marchi and many others. Elia published her poetry in the United States of America in several anthologies of international literature titled “The Enchantment of Memory” (2001), “A Grasp at Eternity” (2001), “The Best Poems and Poets of 2001” (2002), “On Gossamer Wings” (2002) and “The Road That Never Ends” (2003). “The Wisdom of Aramis” (2018) is her first book of essays in English dedicated to her beloved companion Aramis Giving of Good whose love has changed her life forever, filled her heart with the eternal light and blessed her with a totally new perspective of herself and the world around her.

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Copyright © 2019 Elia Pekica Pagon.

Cover design by: Borut Benčina

Photographs courtesy of Elia Pekica Pagon

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the Holy Bible, King James Version (Authorized Version). First published in 1611. Quoted from the KJV Classic Reference Bible, Copyright © 1983 by The Zondervan Corporation.

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The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

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ISBN: 978-1-9822-1746-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-1747-1 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date:  12/10/2018

Dedication

To my sweet Angel Aramis Giving of Good, my best friend, my sweetest companion and my spiritual teacher whom I love with all my heart and whose love and devotion changed my life forever. He showed me the sweetness of pure love, humility, kindness and compassion and gave me the greatest gift of all – his love and devotion as the eternal blessing and the power to overcome anything. My world is a better place because of his presence in it and he will always be my dearest Guardian Angel with a special place in my world and in my heart, a sacred place no one can ever replace.

Contents

Dedication

Author’s Preface

A Letter to Ari

My Little Guardian Lion

The Loyal Heart

Love at First Sight

Inner Child

Edelweiss

True Friendship

Houston Calling

At the Beach

How to Live in the Now?

Stop and Smell the Roses

A Zen Approach to Life

The Beauty of a Genuine Face

Discovering Our Home

Clear Conscience

The Art of Relaxation

The Magic of Coffee

Nature Always Finds a Way

To Hug a Pug

Perfect Universe

Goodness

Our Haven

Black and White

Be a Hero

Through Each Other’s Eyes

The Importance of Balance

You Get What You Give

There Is No Need for Comparison or Competition

The Windows of Perception

Resonance

True or False

Love and Fear

Kindness

Happiness

Turning Dissatisfaction into Satisfaction

Patience

Peace

Empathy

Joy

Freedom

Curiosity

Miracles

Whisper of the Wind

The Tone of Our Voice

In Search of the Light

There Is Nothing Natural About Stress

Closer than We Think

I Choose Paw Prints over Clicks

At the Crossroads

Aimlessness and Purposefulness

Beyond the Chessboard

Key Word: Respect

To Understand Is to Love

The Meaningful Silence

The Religion of Love

Follow Your Own Path

Keep Moving Forward

Inside Out

The Apple Tree

Everyone Has a Story

Coincidences

Vito’s Visit

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

Author’s Preface

They say that the eyes are the windows to the soul and in the world we live in people don’t feel comfortable without their masks and sunglasses covering their souls. To meet someone without a mask or a label is a miracle. If you wish to take part in that ridiculous Masquerade Ball, you have to wear a mask and a costume that goes with it. In the world full of masks and hidden eyes in which we keep dreaming about a better one which is yet to come, I was blessed to discover the world far better and peaceful than the one I used to live in and that new world was right here and the only moment to see it was right now.

This new world I discovered seemed like the old one at first, but it was suddenly full of peace, love, understanding, compassion, kindness, patience, generosity, humility and awareness. What a great world to live in, I thought. What a friendly face this new world has. Where have all the masks gone?, I wondered. And who is playing that sweet music I hear all around? And it was all thanks to my compassionate companion, my Angel Aramis Giving of Good who showed me how to live in a better world right here, right now. When you meet a friendly face such as his, the most beautiful and admirable face you could ever have imagined and when you look into the most loving eyes, your world changes from the core and you become aware of what really matters instead of focusing on the negative aspects of life and the world around us.

Aramis’ unconditional love, his sweet friendship, his loving compassion, kindness and devotion are a great blessing I received and I will cherish him forever and he will keep inspiring me to walk on the bright side of life, and to always look for the good in everything and everyone. It’s not only what we see with our eyes that matters, but what we see with our hearts. Only when we feel do we really see. And in my heart I will always see and feel my Angel walking beside me and his loving eyes looking at me protectively. While we were together nor time, nor space had any impact on our eternal bliss and the energy of love we shared. We discovered that there are absolutely no limits when we experience true love. That sacred power of pure love and our continuous search for goodness all around us bonded our hearts forever and we can never be far apart.

There is a way to a better and more peaceful world full of love, compassion and most admirable faces without masks with open eyes smiling at us in a friendly manner.

Our dreams can come true if we only give them a chance. And it’s always our choice. We see what we want to see and we always find what we are looking for. Ari told me that in his loving way and I trust him completely.

The essays in this book were inspired by my sweet companion and spiritual teacher Aramis whose wisdom is too great not to be shared with the world.

My dear Ari, thank You so much for letting me share Your wisdom with the world. I would have never been able to do that without Your blessing. Your love is my secret Garden of Eden. Thank you so much for putting a ‘Do not disturb’ sign at the entrance to my inner peace and my creativity. That special sign will stay at that entrance forever. Your cute paw prints will be visible on every page of this book to all the readers who know how to see this world with their hearts. It’s the only vision You, as my humble guru ever believed in.

Elia Pekica Pagon

A Letter to Ari

My dearest Ari!

I am listening to our song on You Tube and thinking of You, my Angel.

Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high,

There’s a land that I’ve heard of once in a lullaby.

Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue

And the dreams that you dare to dream,

Really do come true. (Harold Arlen, E. Harburg)

I am writing these lines and thinking:

What is a letter, a word…in comparison to You, my beloved Ari and Your warm, trusting eyes full of love, the sweetest and most beautiful windows to the most lovable soul, to Your soft and gentle paws, to Your silky ears, the cutest little nose, to all that You were, to all that You are and forever will be. You are the world to me. My special world full of love and compassion. How can I ever thank You enough for that special world You gave me?

To see You was to love You. You made friends so easily everywhere You went. Everyone wanted to touch You, feel You, caress You, kiss You…and You were more than happy to give Your love and blessing to everyone You met. All of our memories are still so alive and vivid in our minds. They are all imprinted in our hearts and our souls forever. To have You in our lives was to live in a fairy tale.

We were more than honored and blessed to have had You in our lives. The joy You brought into our lives is indescribable. We experienced everything together and our hearts were literally beating as one. And they still do, in a new way, but they do, we know it and feel it all the time. It hurts me to write about You in the past tense, because I know in my heart that we can never really part. We adored You and will continue adoring You for as long as we shall live and we know we will meet again and again and that we will keep meeting forever, because the love we shared is eternal and can never die.

I know now that Your full name Aramis – Giving of Good was Your true mission. You came into our lives on a glorious day as the cutest little fawn Pug, a real musketeer determined to protect us from all the evils of this world and give us all Your love and all Your blessings, all Your goodness, sweetness and kindness… The moment I took You in my arms was the moment I discovered the magic of pure love. Thank You, my sweet Angel for loving me so much and for letting me love You.

Dear Ari! You know that we would give the world just to be able to look into Your loving eyes again and to be able to hold You, cuddle You and talk to You in our special way, to be able to sing to You and see You smile again. We would give the world to have our morning coffee with You on our laps. It was enough just to be beside You to be surrounded by peace and mutual love, compassion and understanding. We would do anything to have You back in our lives…

Your bed is still here, just as your favorite pillow, and our hearts still beat as one as the candle burns trying to comfort us with its flame. We can still hear you breathing while sleeping on Your favorite pillow. Your breathing was our favorite sound in the whole world. It was the sweetest and most magical sound we ever heard. It’s just so empty without You on Your favorite spot, dear Ari. We know that we just have to look into our hearts and minds to find You, see You and feel You. Still, it’s hard, dear Ari, it’s so hard to cope with life’s challenges without Your loving gaze. But we know, we know for sure that You are always by our side, watching over us, protecting us and loving us as You used to during our wonderful thirteen years, two precious months and eleven magical days together. We can never part, never…. Your love for us and our love for you is and always will be the greatest gift to all of us. We never knew how to be apart from each other and therefore we know that You will always love us and stay by our side, just as we will always love you, cherish you, protect You and adore You. Days will go by and our love for each other will grow and grow.

It just hurts so much not to be able to see You physically, to pet You, cuddle You, hold You and kiss You. Suddenly, minutes last longer and hours keep turning into days…without You, our loving Angel. Every moment, every room, every street, every encounter, every step we take is so empty and sad without You. We miss You so much it hurts.

Your loving name is written all over our hearts and minds. We were and we still are one soul whose parts met on this journey we call life. If somebody asked us: How did it feel to find each other and begin your lives together? We would simply say: We all felt like coming home after a long journey. When we met, our entire soul was complete and we were finally home. You will therefore always be with us because You were a part of us even before You came into our lives as the greatest and most precious gift. We know You would suffer to see us so sad and heartbroken… You loved our joy and laughter and that’s where we will keep coming back to in our memories, I know You would want us to if You were here. To have such a great, loving, kind, gentle and sweet companion like You, my dearest Ari, was a true blessing. I am happy because I know You were very happy with us throughout Your entire life, we loved You so much and took such good care of You, making Your every wish come true….

My dearest Ari, Your love was a love from a better world and we can never thank You enough for showing us that precious world as well as welcoming us in it and for making our dreams come true. It’s just not enough to say – Thank You, our dearest Ari. Thank You so much for Your love and friendship… Thank You for your eternal faithfulness and devotion, Your loving compassion and comfort, thank You for all your patience and kindness, thank you for Your great wisdom and all the precious advice you gave us…. Thank You, thank You, thank You, thank You for every precious moment we shared from the bottom of our hearts. You made this world and our own world a better place and the memory of Your glorious life will live on in so many ways. Our love for You will go on forever and will continue growing every day. Words are just not enough to express our enormous love for You, just as they are simply not enough to describe our pain.

We remember every little moment we spent together, all the wonderful and interesting people and their companions we met together, all the nicknames we gave You: Aruli, Chicco, Angel Boy and our favorite – Diggy which later practically became Your new name. We remember all of our days and nights together, all of our mornings, afternoons and evenings, all of our journeys and late working hours, all of our games and quiet family evenings, all of our springs and summers spent by the sea and all of our autumns and winters when we slept together making each other warm. Every moment was a moment of magic.

New days are now ahead of us and our memories with You remain behind.

Although we know that time is the greatest healer, we simply cannot give a promise to grieve not as William Wordsworth wrote in his poem "Splendor in the Grass", but we know we will find strength in what remains behind. The memories we have together will be our strength in the days ahead.

We will keep our loving memories with You in our hearts and minds forever and we will always be grateful for Your love and cherish all our moments together, from the moment You entered our lives and our hearts as the cutest Pug puppy in the world, through Your joyful youth, all the way to Your peaceful mature and older days. Years went by, thirteen wonderful years, two precious months and eleven beautiful days with You, our beloved Ari, and every day we loved each other more and more.

We never thought that one of our days will be our last day together, it happened so suddenly and made us the saddest people on Earth… Our last day together was a day like any other… It was our usual day… And that’s the saddest thing of all. There was no warning of the deepest sadness that was about to come. We didn’t have time to say goodbye. But, on the other hand – how could we ever say goodbye to You, our precious Angel, we just couldn’t and You knew it… How can we ever be apart, right? A word goodbye was never in our dictionary nor will it ever be.

Suddenly it all seemed like a dream we lived in. And it was the most beautiful dream of all, the one from which we never wanted to be woken to the harsh reality that was suddenly staring at us and making us miserable. But then we asked ourselves: How could we ever stop dreaming when we knew that our dream was real?

A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is a reality.

John Lennon

That’s why our dream can never end. It simply can’t. Our song and our dance will never end. We will always be together, we will always be one soul, one heart, one mind, one world, one dream. We will keep creating new lyrics to every song we love, adapting it to our world of dreams, dedicating it to You, our precious Angel, our biggest love, our beloved Ari and we know You will hear us sing to You and be happy.

Dearest Ari, Your sweet love will always be the greatest treasure of our lives. You will live forever in our memories and our hearts. We can never say goodbye, we just have to learn to be together in a new way. Kindred spirits keep meeting each other in all dimensions. Our hearts and souls are deeply entwined and I know we will keep meeting forever.

Our dearest Angel Boy, our dearest Diggy, may God be always by Your side and may You Rest in Peace and dream the sweetest dreams while we watch over You… Good Boy!!!

We will always be faithful and devoted to You, our Guardian Angel, we love You so much, we love You more than all the greatest and most beautiful words of all the languages of this world can ever say… We love You to the farthest Moon in the farthest Galaxy and back a million times. God Bless You!!!

My Little Guardian Lion

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

Why do we always have to be somewhere else in our mind instead of being where we really are in a certain moment? Every time we let our mind wander off, we are taking precious moments away from our lives for good. Once the moment is gone, we can’t bring it back any more. We often read and talk about being present in the moment, without actually knowing how to really be present in the moment, how to really be at peace. And the only way to be in the present moment is to be at peace, as Lao Tzu said.

For example, in Tai Chi Chuan rooting is everything. It’s the first thing the Master taught us while I was practicing Tai Chi Chuan. We must find our center in order to reach the perfect balance. As I said, the rooting is the beginning of Tai Chi Chuan practice. It’s the base and the foundation for further practice. Good foundation is important in everything we do, just as it is in life itself. A good house needs a good foundation. A good relationship does too. If we want our plant to be healthy, we must first make sure that its root is healthy. Tai Chi Chuan movements are very demanding at first, but when you succeed in rooting, i.e. in creating a strong root, the movements start to flow without any effort at all, they become the flow of energy. It requires a lot of practice to master the martial art of Tai Chi Chuan, but as a basic practice, it can be a healing and relaxing practice for everyone. When we find our center and sense our root, we become as strong and still as a mountain and we can flow easily like a great river, as Lao Tzu would say.

I would have never started practicing Tai Chi, or started studying Chinese language, if I hadn’t been to China. My legendary trip to Beijing changed my life forever. I saw a world totally different from our own and met some wonderful people whose vision of the spiritual world was so much different from the Western point of view and therefore so much more revealing and interesting to me. China opened my horizons in so many ways.

In one of my poems about travelling I wrote the following verse:

To travel is to dream and to be woken upon our return.

My verse is so true, travelling is like dreaming, but I must also say that some trips are more than dreams because they can awaken us in so many ways. One of the awakening trips was my trip to China.

I went to this remarkable trip with my old friend Ivor, whom I had met while I was studying in Brighton, England. We enjoyed every minute of our time in China. We went everywhere and were amazed every step of the way. We visited a lot of temples: The Temple of Heaven, Five Pagoda Temple, Temple of Confucius, Wofo Temple – The Temple of the Reclining Buddha and many, many others. Of all the temples we visited, I was especially amazed by The White Cloud Taoist Temple, being the world’s most famous and most beautiful Taoist temple. I was overjoyed to be there because Lao Tzu is my favorite author in the whole world. I have many versions of his masterpiece Tao Te Ching – The Book of The Way and every time I read it anew there is something new to discover. I absolutely love Lao Tzu. To me he doesn’t seem like an ancient philosopher at all, rather the most modern and most observant of all, the best visionary I ever met in the books. While reading Tao Te Ching we realize that Taoism is in fact very simple. Its key belief is that we can truly understand Tao ("The Way", or "The Way of Life") only through Nature itself, only by observing the Nature and its ways and not through scholastic theological studies. It is in fact the book about discovering the brighter way of this world and our numerous ways (lives) in it by walking the path of virtue, happiness and harmony.

The book teaches us how to live in harmony with Nature and how to recognize miracles in everyday life. It shows us the magic of spontaneity, generosity, kindness and humility and teaches us how to read secret messages from the universal spirit equally known and connected to all living beings. It is the handbook of a joyful, graceful, happy life. To read Tao Te Ching is one thing, but to visit China, to come to the very source of that noble philosophy and learn about Lao Tzu there, on the spot, is something completely different and even more exciting.

Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.

Bruce Lee

During my stay in China my mind wasn’t wandering at all like it used to on some other trips I took. I was fully focused all the time and managed to soak in all the Beijing sights and landmarks.

We were super excited to visit The Great Wall of China, or better to say The Great Wall of Badaling (it is the best preserved and most representative section of The Great Wall). When we arrived to Badaling, two of the guys from the group decided that The Great Wall was just too huge for them to conquer and went riding the camels instead of climbing up The Great Wall of China. To them it wasn’t a special experience at all, but only a waste of time. These two men were China silk dealers who were only after silk and nothing else could interest them. I felt sorry for them and it was quite a shock to me to find out that there are people in this world who couldn’t care less for the landmarks such as The Great Wall, the landmarks which attract millions of tourists from all around the world every year who later say that it was the experience of a lifetime, something they would never forget.

All the rest of us didn’t hesitate for a second. We immediately wanted to climb up The Great Wall and have the walk of our lives. It was really the walk of my life. Just the fact of actually being on The Great Wall gave me such a special feeling, it’s beyond any explanation. No picture or movie, or video clip from the internet can ever show you the magnificence of The Great Wall. It’s greater than any word could explain. Its greatness is beyond any description. So, I will not even try to describe it. I just remember everyone from our group saying how The Great Wall could be seen from the Moon. Then an old man from our group called Joseph Varga said something like:

Maybe The Great Wall of China can be seen from the Moon, but I wonder – who is there to see us now?

We all started laughing about the Moon joke, so I started feeling as if being on the Moon itself while walking The Great Wall of China and Joseph started waving to that someone on the Moon who could supposedly see us having the walk of our lives. We were having so much fun comparing The Great Wall to the Moon that it will always make me laugh my heart out just to think about it.

Despite the fact that he was joking about the Moon and making us all laugh, I noticed some deep sadness in the old man’s eyes and felt sorry for him. Joseph Varga went on this journey of a lifetime on his own. We didn’t know anything about him, but the sadness in his eyes made me want to befriend him and see him laugh again. So while being on The Great Wall, I took his arm spontaneously and we walked a certain part of The Great Wall together, because some of the sections were pretty steep and I saw that Joseph wasn’t too comfortable about it. While Joseph and I were walking ‘our walk on The Moon’, as we called it, my heart was so happy, because I made him smile and enjoy walking The Great Wall with the rest of us. I also remember those two silk dealers I mentioned earlier riding their poor camels down below us laughing at us while we were walking the walk of our lives. I felt sorry for the camels that had to carry those two men who treated them with no respect. They didn’t treat other living beings like they wanted to be treated. They didn’t talk to people the way they wanted to be talked to. They forgot that respect can only be earned by our actions and attitudes. From their perspective we were all crazy for climbing The Great Wall of China, just as they were crazy not to in the eyes of the rest of us. After all, climbing The Great Wall is the highlight of any trip to China. It is the longest man-made structure ever built and it is, as we all know, considered one of the greatest wonders of the world. What a crazy trip that one was. I will never forget it. All the pictures from it are still so vivid in my mind.

And while talking about the pictures, there is a story about the photo that just needs to be told here. We all took numerous photos of ourselves climbing The Great Wall and one of my photos was used for the cover page of my book of interviews titled On Diogenes’ Path (Na Diogenovu putu in Croatian language). Our dear companion Joseph Varga was removed from that photo for the purpose of creating a better cover page as they said, but I somehow felt sorry for him being removed from the photo and wasn’t sure whether to approve of his removal from the photo or not and then in the end I approved of them removing it, but was restless later on, because it was bothering me. Every time I look at that book of mine, I know that someone is missing from that cover photo, so with this essay the original photo will be published for everyone to meet dear Joseph Varga who can be seen on the photo right behind me, waiting for my friend Ivor to take the photo as quickly as possible so that we can continue walking The Great Wall together.

Image1.jpg.jpg

Elia walking The Great Wall

In my mind I can still see us running through The Chinese Imperial Palace (The Forbidden City) like children. It’s so huge and truly magnificent. You can spend the whole day there. To be in The Forbidden City is like being on a different Planet, like being in the past that is still alive. In China we found ourselves in the land of the living past, of the living tradition. They don’t see the past as the past, but as the living present, or better to say the living eternity. That’s how much they care about tradition. There was so much to learn and find out everywhere we went. Every stone and statue had a story hidden behind it, every threshold had its meaning, everything was legendary, mythic, mystical and full of some hidden wisdom for us to discover. We felt as if we were on a treasure hunt. And we were right to feel that way, because it was a treasure hunt for our hidden and suppressed inner treasure.

We also visited the legendary Tiananmen Square, but didn’t stay there for too long because of the craziest traffic in the world as we discovered right there while crossing any high traffic avenue in Beijing. It was more than adventurous to visit numerous restaurants with traditional Chinese food and it was absolutely spectacular to see the show of the Traditional Chinese Theatre where we almost started crying during the performance of the great Chinese actors who were portraying the eternal fight between good and evil forces of the world, between positive and negative energies and vibrational frequencies of the Universe, between white and black, between the Sun and the Moon. The show was about the harmony of all the elements, about the importance of energies, or better to say – about the secret of life itself.

Right there, in China, this world suddenly seemed so simple to me and yet so mysterious. There was always something new to learn and discover, even if it was something we already knew, but were suddenly seeing it in a different way. Indoctrinators say that once we learn something, it can’t be unlearned any more. But, it’s so not true. The way in which we see this world is always our choice. We are the ones who choose how to see it. It was right there in that Chinese Theatre where some of our travel companions first started to realize what Yin and Yang, the opposite, yet interdependent forces of the world and the Universe itself really mean.

The day we spent in The Beijing Summer Palace with the famous Marble Boat (also known as the boat of Purity and Ease) seemed like a dream to us. The weather was great all the time and we enjoyed every minute of our time in Beijing. I remember going to The Beijing Zoo to visit the famous Panda House with the marvelous giant Panda Bears. Oh, my God, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Pandas were so, so cute. I could have watched them for hours. My friend Ivor had to drag me away from them. Such huge and lovely creatures. After visiting Pandas, we were eager to drink some coffee, because it was early in the morning, but to our surprise coffee was nowhere to be found on the premises of the Zoo. How odd, we thought and gave up any hope of drinking coffee that morning. Later on, after talking to our dear guide Hao who was always more than happy to explain everything to us, we found out that Chinese people don’t really drink coffee that much. Hao (n.b. whose name means good in Chinese language), was so patient all throughout our stay in China and was always willing to tell us numerous stories about the Chinese history, tradition, philosophy, religion and culture in general that we couldn’t be more grateful for his help and goodness like his name implies. I don’t remember ever having enjoyed the company of a tour guide to such extent as I enjoyed the company of Hao. We were all full of questions every step of the way and Hao was smiling at us peacefully and joyfully while giving us all the answers we were looking for so willingly. He was like an open book we could read while visiting the landmarks of Beijing and its surroundings.

Hao was especially excited