"Let my country awake"

 A few weeks ago, someone posted a video of the actor Martin Sheen reciting one of his favorite poems on the occasion of his 80th birthday.  The poem was by the Indian poet, Rabindranath Tagore, who won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1913.  The poem is called "Where the Mind is Without Fear" (Gitanjali 35).  

Sheen clearly loves the poem, as he also recited it in a speech this past year at a protest about climate change organized by fellow actor and his Grace and Frankie co-star, Jane Fonda.  He said at that time, "We are called to find something in our lives worth fighting for.  Something that unites the will of the spirit with the work of the flesh.  Something that can help us lift up this nation and all its people where the heart is without fear and the head is held high, where knowledge is free."

Here is the full text of Tagore's poem:

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habitat;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

I can see why Sheen is so fond of Tagore's poem.  Our country - indeed, our world - is at a major crossroads right now.  The direction in which we choose to go, right now at this moment in time, will have long-lasting repercussions, not only for the rest of our lives, but also for the lives of all the people that will follow.  Let my country awake.  Let my country awake.