Rebecca Nappi: If you want to help, lend an ear

A year ago, I got into a little fender-bender. No one was injured, and the cars suffered only minor damage. I called my insurance company and when the agent asked what happened, I described the accident down to the smallest detail. Ten minutes into the story, I said if I needed to talk this much about a negligible accident, people in serious car accidents must really vent.

The agent told me they are trained to say right away: “Tell me what happened.” Then they listen without interrupting. If you don’t let people talk out the trauma at the beginning, he said, they’ll keep coming back to it, making it impossible to collect the more factual information.

Anytime I witness a poor listening situation, or when I personally don’t listen well, I remember that conversation. Listening has little cultural value anymore, unless you get paid for it. Listening doesn’t help the bottom line. A man wrote Miss Manners recently to tell her how to be connected to a live human being when stuck in automated conversations with credit card companies and airlines: Shout a profanity. It’s come to this, darn it.

So today I am creating the Compassionate Listening Corps – the CLC. In the Great Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt created the Civilian Conservation Corps – the CCC. People were hungry. The CCC, along with other public works programs, helped feed them. Our spirits are hungry these days. People brim with stories to tell. Listeners are in short supply.

National efforts, such as the Dialogue Project, foster community conversations. But the Compassionate Listening Corps will foster the art of listening well, period. Not much speaking is required in return; in fact, it’s discouraged.

Interested in joining the CLC? Here are the steps.

Step One: Designate a listening bench.

The Campaign for Love and Forgiveness, a public television effort, encourages people to share how love and forgiveness transformed their personal and community lives. The campaign symbol: a red bench.

I’m adapting that concept and ask that members of the CLC have a designated listening “bench.” It can be a chair in your office. A beanbag loveseat in your basement. Or a portable chair, the kind you see at soccer games.

As CLC members, you must be open to spontaneous listening sessions. A co-worker walks into your office with a story. Settle into your listening chair. A family member needs to be heard. Plop down in that beanbag. A stranger begins a story. Set up the lightweight chair.

Step Two: Take the CLC vow:

I vow not to text message, doodle or daydream while listening.

I vow not to interrupt when someone is telling me a story.

I vow not to try to top a person’s story with one of my own.

I vow not to give advice unless specifically asked.

I vow to encourage storytelling, with comments such as “Tell me more.”

CCC built bridges and shelters. The rewards of their work rippled through their families. The young men sent money home, feeding bodies and perhaps saving lives.

The work of the CLC will ripple, too. We suffer from a lack of imagination to solve the country’s problems. Creative problem-solving requires brainstorming sessions in which ideas are listened to in sincere ways.

Can we save the country by activating the Compassionate Listening Corps? Probably not. But thanks for listening anyway.