I was 19 when the Berlin wall came down, and I was 31 when I had the opportunity to stand in front of what remains of it. Though there is little left of the original wall, it was a powerful moment for me. The front of the remaining section is now a gallery of sorts, each panel a different artists view. I took this photograph of the backside- the parts that few go around to see. The graffiti on the peeling surface is a different type of art. A little less pretty, and a little more raw. I remember watching the footage 2 decades ago, strangers side by side pulling down chunks of it, tearing it apart with bare hands. The faces of the older people who had lived with that wall cutting them in two is something that I will never forget. Each one of them wore a look of awe as though to say “It was wrong, it shouldn’t be here, but I never believed that I would see it crumble.”
There are so many daily atrocities in this world, so many times that human rights are trod on without regard, and it continues to happen. Day after day after day. It’s easy to be overwhelmed by it all, to get buried under the hate and the evil and the despair. That reason is also why it is so important to remember things like 20 years ago today the Berlin wall came down. Those pin pricks of light are what give us the hope that a wrong can be made right. A change can be made.
We are not very good at being a human race. We fuck it up on a horrifically regular basis. Not just small mistakes, enormous ones that tear at our moral fiber, that challenge the very right to life of some, and that show our ugly side in the things that we are willing to do to one another. Remembering the end of the Berlin Wall and the faces of those people as they watched it fall is the little pin prick of light that I need to remind me that it isn’t all dark. Mostly, but not all. Sometimes we get it right.
