Sometimes there is so little wind that a pond sits flat as glass, and the drop of a single stone, or the rise of a single fish, sends a long, rippling message travelling to every single inch of the shore.

To gravelled shingle, to overhung cut-bank, to every cove and brook-mouth and rock and small sheltered inlet, comes that first, single reflecting ripple, that lead ripple that collides with the shore and angles back a cosign of itself.

The first slapping, lipped message, significant in its solitude. The one lost and empty hello, that unanswered greeting, the whispered echo that lisps back at you through a long and empty highway culvert — still you, and yet nothing like you at all.

The Trans-Canada Highway runs past hundreds of those flat ponds, and a politician in a helicopter will fly over many thousands more.

Numerous problems

Flat, still ponds, keeping their own counsel among the moss plains and barrens.

But each of them with their own particular concern; the shallow, boggy ones that fear the summer will be too dry and leave them as chocolate-coloured pans of peat, the ones that depend on the intricacies of beaver construction for their very existence, the ones edging on stagnation that fear the failure of whatever in-flow they are left with.

Politicians fly over plenty of people, too. People concerned about the future of their jobs, about the safety of kids who live too close to avail of school buses, concerned about old age and health care and education.

A brief opportunity

And the people those politicians meet basically get to drop one small pond-pebble of their own; as the candidates look at you seriously on your doorstep, you get the briefest of opportunities to send out your own small ripple, to raise that single issue that troubles you the most about the directions that governments take.

By now, all of the pebbles have had their brief fling into the water, the ripples have run out across the ponds and back again, dispersing and shrinking and falling flat upon themselves.

Let’s hope that the winning politicians in today’s provincial election hear and understand the things they’ve been told on the campaign trail, and decide to act on them — or at least decide to let the things they’ve heard actually shape the direction of government.

Listen to voters

Let’s hope that whoever the winners are, they let themselves live by the will of the electorate, a will they will only hear occasionally now that they have their new and exalted positions.

Because it’s easy to decide that, because you’ve won, you now hold the cards; that you are the brightest and the best suited to decide what is really in the best interests of the people youâe(TM)ve been elected to serve.

The mantle of government often makes people so intent on the highway ahead that they forget about the ponds beside, and the message those ponds might be able to offer.

Everyone should take the time to watch the ripples spin circular; should take the time to listen for the faintest and least strident of messages. Somewhere out there amongst them live love and concern and the most careful of thoughts, ideas and opportunities and dreams that are being offered up gently, because those who offer them rarely get the chance to speak frankly — and, frankly, are rarely ever asked.

The only thing worse than a message that isn’t heard is one that happens to be heard, however offhandedly, and winds up being ignored.

Hardens the heart, it does, and makes more callous the cynic.

And that does no one good.