Today, I celebrate my birthday. Well, not really. I should call it my re-birthday. You see, I grew up in East Berlin, and today twenty years have passed since the Fall of the Berlin Wall.

I was 8 years old, living in Moscow on that day. Little did I know that it would not only change the course of history, but my life as well.

Back then I did not understand the significance of what had happened. However, when I returned to Berlin during the summer of 1990, I could already feel that some profound change had taken place, and that more was to come. Still, I had yet to grasp how philosophy shapes man and his creations. I had yet to gain the knowledge necessary to perceive how the human spirit is uplifted by freedom and crushed by coercion.

But today, I understand that the fall of the Berlin Wall opened much more for me than a physical border.

Had it not been for that day, I would probably not be living in the United States now. Those who wanted to cross the East German border, attempting to exercise one of their most fundamental individual rights — the freedom to seek greater economic liberty and personal opportunity — were shot by the border guards.

Had it not been for that day, I would probably not have obtained a degree in philosophy, or have been exposed to the great minds of classical liberal and libertarian thoughts — John Locke, Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Friedrich Hayek, Ayn Rand, and Milton Friedman. Higher education was rationed, controlled and censored; individualists were spied on, harassed, blackmailed and imprisoned in East Germany.

Most importantly, had it not been for that day, I would not have met my husband, a man as passionate about choosing his life as I am about choosing mine.

Yet, I do not regard this day as a reminder not to take for granted the freedom I now enjoy. It is simply the day that I and millions of other people regained the ability to exercise the rights we naturally possess.

What matters are not the walls that we erect, but the ones that we tear down.