What’s the most memorable New Year’s Eve you can remember? For me, without a doubt, it was 1989—when I danced ON the Berlin Wall with my East German friends. The Wall had come unexpectedly crashing down in November ’89 and jubilation was still running high. I’d taken the train from Portugal to Germany to spend Christmas with Anneli (my East German roommate) and her family in their hometown, Greifswald. But on New Year’s Eve, Berlin was the place to be.

Imagine, just seven weeks earlier, the Berlin Wall was the most heavily militarized border in the world. And now we were dancing on top of it.

The intoxicating wonder of the power that ordinary people wield to change the world led twenty-one-year-old me to write:

Only People can make history happen—the empowerment and struggle of a People for something they BELIEVE in touches the very roots of our humanity.

Of course, January 1, 1990 dawned cold and gray. Empty champagne bottles, spent firecrackers, abandoned scarves, and unsightly trash littered the plaza around the Brandenburg Tor. That would never have happened in East Berlin before November 9^th. Other changes were coming to East Germany, too. And, like the advent of litter, not all of them would be positive.

But New Year’s Eve 1989 was a night I will forever hold onto. It was filled with a once-in-a-lifetime certainty that nothing would ever go wrong in the world again.

Given the state of the world, I could use another night like that right about now.