As we watch the things our parents and grandparents built collapse under the weight of universal demands for justice and a balanced, sustainable future, these days I find myself reflecting more and more on the memory of belonging. Who or what is a Barbadian, a Bajan as we say? What makes Barbados unique? What role has the island’s history as a plantation economy founded on the trade in enslaved Africans had on who Bajans are as a people attached to a particular geography at this particular moment in time? How does it impact how we recognise, create and assess value? The truth is that identity is a social construct, and self-confidence a learned behaviour. In many ways, we are what we remember. Perhaps even what our DNA remembers. And our memory of belonging, or of not belonging as the case might be, has the power to shape how we treat to today.