Recently on my way to work, I saw a vehicle a few hundred yards in front of me start billowing thick white smoke. Then as it headed up a hill it started gushing black liquid also. Then it stopped completely. I pulled around them and parked my motorcycle on the sidewalk to see if they needed help, and quickly gathered that the man and woman in the vehicle were deaf. I tried to talk to them some and they tried to talk to me some, but I don't know sign language and our attempts were pretty ineffective. So we got by on mostly context and a little bit of body language and I started pushing. Now I weigh about 160 pounds and I'm not in as good a shape as I used to be. I'm entirely incapable of pushing an SUV up a hill single-handedly. But it got the message across and other people joined in. The couple started pushing with me, and another man pulled over to help also. Before long we had their car to a cut in the curb and out of the main road. As we finished another man stopped to help, demonstrating that if it had taken longer we'd have eventually gotten all the help we needed.
We can't always get detailed plans and commitments in advance when there are problems that need to be solved. Sometimes we just have to take a leap of faith that enough of the people around us will understand what's happening and care about it. Sometimes once we see the direction something needs to move we have to just push.
