how many humans does it take to unstuck a truck?
When I was walking along the beach earlier, I saw a truck stuck in the shallow water.
It had a trailer with a pair of jet skis, and was attempting to bring them ashore. Emphasis on "attempting". Despite lots of engine revving, its back wheels spun out before it could get into the firmer sand and the truck went nowhere. This happened on repeat.
The truck was stuck.
Judging from the other nearby trucks with similar trailers and the colorfully signed clubhouses past the high tide mark, I expect that bringing in jet skis was a daily routine.
When the truck attempted to accelerate forward, there was a guy bouncing on the back of the jet skis, presumably to help give the truck more traction. After a few failed attempts, a few more guys got on the trailer and jet skis, presumably to add even more weight, but to no avail.
The truck was thoroughly stuck.
I couldn't help but think, hey I've seen this movie before. My urban upbringing didn't provide this sort of experience, but the construction site I worked in Kansas sure did. We got stuck many a time in the mud, and the solution was to lay short blocks of wood underneath the wheels to provide more of a surface for the tires to grip upon.
I'm sure these fellows had it handled, but I couldn't help myself from looking around for some nearby pieces of driftwood that I could help contribute to the cause.
Before I could find anything, a neighbor and/or competitor in the jet ski rental market walked over to the driver and gesticulated turning the steering wheel. Moments later, the driver adjusted course to be angled away from the coastline, rather than perpendicular, and this seemed to do the trick.
The truck was unstuck!
The point of this story, despite its somewhat shaggy dog nature, is to give an example of humans helping humans. Without that person's advice to angle the truck, who knows how long it would have taken to drive out.
I think that it's really easy to get oneself into these mental ruts of believing that humans are always selfish and always looking out for themselves. While there certainly is a lot of evidence to support that belief, if you start looking for instances of humans helping humans, you may be surprised at how often you see it.
I believe that helping each other is fundamentally baked in to human nature. It's instinctual. It's natural. And if you stop and think, you realize that this inclination to help is perhaps why humans have completely and utterly taken over the Earth, despite having no fangs, no claws, and dreadfully helpless offspring. Incredible intelligence doesn't mean much if it never extends beyond oneself.
And thus concludes my post appreciating the generosity of a kind soul I have never seen before and will likely never see again. Keep your eye out for humans helping humans -- I find these little moments to be quite inspiring.
Here's an unrelated photo I took near the beach with the (un)stuck truck. Clouds and foreign language road signs frequently catch my photography eye, and today I got to feed two birds with one scone.
