I recently attended a talk about the work of the Samaritans – an organization I’ve always admired but, as it turned out, knew very little about. I’m sure I’m not the only one who sees them as a group who answer the phone in the middle of the night to people who are about to commit suicide. They do do that, but that is a very un-nuanced view of their work.

The Samaritans’ commitment is to listening to people – who may be troubled, or lonely, or suicidal. The organisation started more than 70 years ago, and now has more than 200 branches across the UK and Ireland, and 23,000 volunteers. They answer a call every 10 seconds.

Interestingly, they are very much not in the business of giving advice, or building a relationship with the caller. A volunteer listener will only talk to a caller once – they would speak to another person if they rang again. And however obvious, or good, potential advice might seem, the rule is that it is never given.

It's simple and almost stark – and what it points up is that the world can seem an aggressive, harsh cold place to many people, but that it wouldn’t take much to try to improve things. ‘Just listening’ is an astonishingly effective tool: it makes people feel valued as well as heard.

The organization helps people in many ways, not just by answering the phone: In prisons, schools, hospitals and on the rail network, Samaritans ‘are working with people who are going through a difficult time and training others to do the same’.

We can all support the Samaritans, by volunteering or donating money, and that’s a great thing to do, but maybe we can all think about listening more to other people in our daily lives. We are all so busy and we are in a rush the whole time. We can be on the phone to someone and see the time ticking by, we need to be elsewhere. But listening really is a gift and a blessing. Anyone who has taken the time – perhaps in some random situation, perhaps with a stranger – to sit down and talk or listen, knows how rewarding it can be, and that it can truly help someone. Sometimes it is easier to talk to a stranger. And trying NOT to give advice makes life easier – you don’t have that worry that you said the wrong thing, or gave bad advice.

If you look up ‘listening’ online, there is a surprising amount of business-related content, aimed at people trying to advance their careers, sell their goods, or improve their businesses. ‘Active listening’ is advised for all of them.

But we could try to listen for the benefit of others: imagine if we all learned from the Samaritans, tried to make time, said maybe that we would spend five minutes each day listening to someone we feel wants to talk, and that we would aim to be non-judgemental. Not hard to do, but it could make a difference.

In the Epistle of James 1:19, he says “let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger” which is a nice summing up – hard to achieve sometimes, but worth the effort.

 

Moira Redmond