I sent off an application to be a Samaritan today. It’s something I’ve been considering for a while – years probably. My dad (RIP) was a Samaritan, and that’s one reason, but another reason is that I believe I’m a good listener. I feel I want to give something back to the community – perhaps this is how I’ll do it. I say perhaps, because I don’t know if it’ll be right for me. It may be too much of an emotive strain, I may not be able to leave it at the door when I leave a shift – that sort of thing, and beside which, they may not accept my application!

It was a fairly in depth application – not quite down to inside leg measurement, but references, photos and searching questions. One of the questions was along the lines of “Are you in the police”, which is interesting, because you can’t do both – due to the oath of privacy you take being a Samaritan clashes with the oath of upholding the law; a police person swears an oath to uphold the law, no matter what so if someone was breaking the law and told you about it as part of the call, you’d have to act on it. A Samaritan, wouldn’t.

A lot of people think the Samaritans is a Christian organisation – it’s not (even though it was founded by a priest). It’s an organisation of people who are there to listen to people who need someone to talk to. It’s not just for people who are feeling suicidal.

Anyway – I’ll probably document my progress here (it’s around 45 hours training spread over a few months) but obviously I won’t discuss or blog about any volunteers or callers at all – ever.

I’ll see how it goes!