It was about 5 in the afternoon, and I was walking back to The Commons from a three-hour chemistry lab in Stevenson. I had not been back to my dorm since I left at 7:45 a.m., and I was yet to eat lunch. Trying to find as many reasons as possible to complain about how tired and starved I was, I dragged my feet along the sidewalk toward an epiphany.

For the past few days, I had noticed brown sheets of plywood slowly be transformed into a sort of gray wall with a cutout so that people could pass through. Everyone was wondering the same thing: “What is that?” Someone even asked one of the builders if the gate was intended to keep the freshmen off of main campus. The only words of his reply that I heard were “Checkpoint Charlie,” as I rushed groggily off to my first class.

Checkpoint Charlie, I remembered, as I looked at a horde of students with paintbrushes going at the wall with a frenzy of creative energy. All my tiredness evaporated in an instant, as I grabbed my camera to capture the moment. I, then, was invited to join in and paint. The directions were to draw what a wall symbolized to me or what it meant to have “Freedom Without Walls” — the name of the partnership program with the German Information Center USA. I paused, with a clean brush in my hand; I did not know what to write. I looked around at a group of Malaysian students writing in their native tongue. Another was painting a man holding a chisel to chip away at the wall. Some other students were painting flowers and sunshine. Looking up, I noticed a large blank spot right above the passage. Suddenly, the words came to me.

I moved a ladder to the middle of the walkway and grabbed yellow and white paint. I braced myself with my left hand and prayed that I would not fall. I painted the words WHEN EAST MEETS WEST: ONE WORLD in large block letters. I asked myself how a divided city could stand. I could come up with no good answer. Walls, physical, emotional, psychological or ecumenical, are boundaries that prevent the crossover of some important force or another. In Berlin, the Wall not only physically separated the city and families, it showed terrible political rifts, enforced oppression and garnered outcry throughout the world. Hardly a source of protection, the Wall confined those to a place they deemed unhappy, and those who tried to escape faced high costs — their lives, their limbs and any trace freedom they maintained by being a compliant member of society.

By the time I finished painting, my left hand was rather studded with splinters, but I felt no physical pain. I thought ashamedly of how, given so much — opportunity, protection, food and shelter — that I insisted on being depressed and ungrateful. Twenty years ago, an oppressive social institution was chipped away to pave the way for a new and freer future for the people of Berlin. About 60 years ago, West Berlin — the sole glimmer of hope and freedom in the war-torn East — was cut off from the rest of world by the Soviet Union. For almost an entire year, the starving population had to be airlifted rations, medicine and supplies that we, today, take completely for granted. I, as a freshman at Vanderbilt University, cannot begin to complain about how tough I think my life is. Anyone in East Berlin, over 20 years ago would have traded places with me in a heartbeat.

Even today, millions of people worldwide can only dream of being students at any such esteemed university, spending time studying and paving not only our own futures but those of this country and of the world. This was not my epiphany, however. That day, I realized that people are only as strong as they choose to be. If the people of Berlin had kept quiet, the wall dividing them would likely still stand today. Every time I look at pictures of the graffiti on the Berlin wall, I see the strength of a body of people — a group so united in a cause that they literally broke down a wall.

Five days have passed since I painted OUR wall, and each day more paint is added. Each day, the symbolism of OUR wall grows one day stronger. I have been taking pictures to document this change over the past week, and I feel more confident now than ever before that we, the students of Vanderbilt University, when united, have the ability to tear down walls, just as the united citizens of Berlin fought and succeeded to join their East and West in One World on Nov. 9, 1989.

***

This past summer, my family and I visited Berlin while on vacation. Even though I took pictures beside some of the most heavily graffiti- and gum-laden parts of the Wall, I was unaware that 2009 marked the 20th Anniversary of its fall until Vanderbilt University engaged in the “Freedom Without Walls” project. I would like to give thanks to the German Information Center USA and the Max Kade Center for European and German Studies for organizing “Freedom Without Walls” and for bringing it to Vanderbilt, thereby allowing me to have this amazing epiphany. I would also like to give special thanks to Dr. Nina Warnke and Jonathan Pitocco for allowing me to paint on the first day, even though I was not with a group. Last, I would like to credit Tokio Hotel’s performance of “World Behind My Wall” at the 2009 EMAs in Berlin for pulling me out of writer’s block to finish this truly heartfelt article.