In an earlier post (Your Choice: Gratitude Zero, Gratitude Lite, or Gratitude Ultra) I ended by suggesting we were going to take a “deep gratitude soak” into the depths of the spectrum of gratitude waters. So I went to dreamstime.com to search for open source photos of “soaking in water”. At that site I found beautiful photos of people soaking in pools, in tubs, in the ocean, lakes, and so forth. I also found animals soaking in the waters or the sun, as well as people soaking their hands or feet, and soaking vegetables before cooking, or putting Easter eggs in water to color the eggs. Some of the photos were so unique that I place them within this post for your review and enjoyment.

There are literally thousands of photos in open source sites (see dreamstime.com) such as those I selected for your review. As I searched I also noted that the concept of “soaking” is a privilege for some, especially people who have leisure time to enjoy and pamper their bodies, whereas other photos captured the need for water for survival in under developed countries. This realization made me deeply aware of the divide in our world between the “haves” and the “have-nots”.

Animals certainly need water all over the world, as do plants. My original concept for this particular post was to stress the main photo at the beginning of this post. That is, I imagined a “deep soak” into the depth of study of “gratitude”. As I noted in an earlier post, it is important to explore our personality traits, our psychologies, our emotions, and our lives in order to learn how to remain in a “state of gratitude”. I believe it is a “state” that we can study and adopt in our everyday lives. Many of us can strive to be “gratitude ultra”.

After some time really enjoying all the photos, and thinking about a long soak into the topic, I was nearly finished selecting photos to share with you. The concept of “soaking” turned out to be much broader than I had originally thought. Finally, I came across a unique photo that stopped me in my tracks. I post the photo below for you as well.

The next photo had a jarring effect on me when it popped up among the hundreds of photos such as those above! It brought me from my deep imagination, nearly a meditation to great depths during a gratitude soak. My mind snapped me quickly from the depths of my thoughts, similar to a deep scuba dive during which I had descended into nearly dangerous depths. Thus, I knew I should ascend gradually to the surface and finish this posting. Rather, when finding this photo, I burst upward rapidly, stopped the bliss I was feeling and emerged into the hard reality that people perform this type of soak daily as well. I feel grateful for all that I learned today…

More content to follow soon.

This is #gratitudeultra. See the post on February 28, 2021 for a definition of gratitude categories.