We’re social animals, you and me. And however splendid isolation may seem – with Garbo setting the gold standard of leave-me-be – we tend to want to connect with others. I guess we’re closer in temperament, most of us anyway, to the fire-bellied toad than we are to the desert tortoise or the Hawaiian monk seal. Toads get a bad press though, don’t they, and what do you know but I find myself in a hole. One of my own digging.

The words are refusing to play nice and my train of thought – I’m sorry to say but that light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming mixed metaphor – it’s stuck in a siding somewhere between Didcot and Banbury. “Your ticket isn’t valid for this service, Sir, and we can’t accept Scottish bank notes. I must insist you alight at the next station.” Alight? “Sir, I’m sorry but smoking is absolutely not permitted on this train.”

What? Wot? Wit? I recall it was Dot Parker who said brevity is the soul of lingerie. But I digress and I undress, emotionally speaking, and I do apologise for any distress. The heart of the matter is that which matters to the heart – and let’s look out for those of us who could be, in the words of another favourite poet, not waving but drowning – which brings us to the talking cure or, from a Samaritans perspective, the listening cure.

What’s your name? And which branch are you in? These are the only personal aspects a listening volunteer is permitted to disclose to a caller. It’s three years since I became a full Sam, no longer a probationer, and I remember the sense of elation I felt following that first shift with the P-plates off.

It was a Sunday morning in May and I walked home along the Water of Leith marvelling at the beauty all around: leaves dancing in the breeze, birds singing their four-chambered hearts out, sun reflecting on the glassy surface. Then I saw something floating on the water, something the ducks and the swans were dodging, something that turned out to be a dog walker’s poop bag, and which sank slowly to the bottom, taking my reverie with it.

It’s counter intuitive to claim you enjoy listening to other people’s unhappiness and, you might even think, bordering on the perverse. How can that be so? Won’t you get depressed? Don’t you ever get bored? But giving some of your time and all your attention to another person for the duration of a phone call is a simple way of making that connection with somebody. Simone Weil, the mystical Marxist and philosopher’s philosopher, with Albert Camus being her number one fanboy, she said:

“Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love”.

The best calls I’ve had, best in the sense of the levels of openness and emotional disclosure, have reached mountainous peaks and oceanic lows, with stories (and never mind AI) that would render Nobel Laureates redundant. Stories that the caller might be recounting for the first time, stories of traumatic events that could have happened decades ago, long stories that it’s nothing short of a privilege to hear.

The golden thread theory suggests finding the thing from their lived experience the caller still cares about in this cruel world. The thing they value and would be reluctant to say goodbye to. It could be a person – a pal they’ve known since primary school or a new grandchild; a pet – nothing quite suggests the likelihood of living another day than a dog in need of a walk or a cat to be fed; or a passion – a dancer who once appeared on Top of the Pops, a poet who crowns you the King of Scotland (I’m a republican but, you know, such is the caller’s prerogative), an Oxbridge bound care-leaver offering dietary advice (“You should definitely have that banana after this call”).

People, when they phone a helpline, can be categorised by the nature of their problem – mental health, grief, addiction etc., and that data is important for service provision, policy making and so on. But it’s their potential, their past, their dreams, their tales to tell; this is what makes an impression, this is what makes a connection, this is what counts. I think of Joe Strummer’s monologue from The Future Is Unwritten documentary: “…we’ve all got to stop just following our own little mouse trail. People can do anything – this is something that I’m beginning to learn...It’s time to take the humanity back into the centre of the ring and follow that for a time...Without people you’re nothing. That’s my spiel.”

Have I got myself out of this self-dug hole? Reach down and lend me a hand would you. I’ve got a night shift tomorrow and who knows what calls await, who’s going to be on the other end of the line and why, all those connections waiting to happen. You and me, you see, we’re social animals, fire-bellied toads. And my train has just arrived at Oxford Parkway. ■

Rodger Evans

Info: Samaritans.org