020

In most essays, I end up writing about two types of nouns: people or things. Technology, culture, and the way the internet, and others, shape us. This time, it's about the other kind of noun: place. Places are a massive part of our identity, both individually and collectively, but their importance often gets taken for granted. Places have a way of staying with us, and for me, Puerto Rico is one of those places. My connection to it isn't casual, but shaped by moments that rooted themselves so deeply they feel permanent. I feel the pull of it even in absence. It's a place that makes me think about what it means to belong, and how geography, culture and memory can fuse together in a way that's impossible to replicate. It isn't just a location, but a reminder that belonging can be both fragile and unshakeable at the same time. Especially because it's an island.

Islands shape people, and culture, in ways other land masses cannot. Boundaries on a map are usually invisible, negotiated or arbitrary. Lines drawn by politics or history. Oceans are different. They are absolute. The ocean is a hard edge. It contains, protects and isolates. It surrounds you, holds you in, and reminds you every day that where you are is finite. On the mainland, you can move in almost any direction and still remain connected. On an island, you circle back.

That containment does something profound. It sharpens the very idea of belonging. It forces people to live closer to each other and to reckon with place in a way that life on land does not demand. Belonging becomes not just a social arrangement but a physical condition. You are inside the boundary, or you are not. The ocean makes that clear.

Puerto Rico has always been more than its size on the map. An island of just over three million people has managed to send its culture to every corner of the globe. The most obvious example is music. Salsa, bomba, and later reggaeton - these weren't just sounds for Puerto Ricans, but became global movements. Salsa took shape in San Juan but grew into the soundtrack of entire decades across LatAm. Reggaeton, once dismissed as too raw or local, is now one of the most streamed genres on the planet thanks to Puerto Rican artists, most notably Bad Bunny. What's remarkable is that Puerto Rican music never lost its anchor. No matter how far it traveled, it carried something distinctly tied to the island. The cadence of Spanish spoken there, patterns from African and Caribbean traditions, the style of drums layered against electronic beats. A track produced in San Juan could end up blasting in any city around the world, but everyone who knows will recognize its origin.

That is the geography of belonging at work. An island compresses people and culture until it becomes dense enough to push outward with force. Influence doesn't come from size. It comes from depth. Puerto Rico is proof of that. A place that has managed to leave fingerprints on the world without ever letting go of its identity.

What's interesting about belonging on an island is how it resists the logic of optimization. The modern world, especially online, is designed for scale. Algorithms flatten difference and deliver whatever is most clickable, efficient, or likely to keep us scrolling. But belonging on an island has always been about something else. The particular, the rooted, the rhythms that are inseparable from geography.

Puerto Rico teaches that belonging isn't just a matter of choosing a community, but that it's shaped by physical reality. The coastline makes sure of it. To belong is to be woven into something that can't simply be replicated elsewhere, even if music and language travel elsewhere. Geography gives culture its weight.

Puerto Rico is not just a cultural past. It's also a possible future. Over the past decade, the island has drawn a new wave of people, projects and ideas. Some of it has been opportunistic - investors and corporations seeking tax breaks. But alongside that, there has been a quieter current: artists, technologists, and communities who see the island as a place to build, and think, differently.

The paradox of Puerto Rico is that it holds both tradition and experimentation in the same hand. Family ties, neighborhood gatherings, and music that stretches back centuries coexist with experiments in blockchain technology, renewable energy and global networks. In San Juan, you can walk from a centuries-old fort to a rooftop where people are trading crypto ideas and playing with new forms of digital art. That proximity makes the island feel like a testing ground for what comes next.

Belonging in this context looks different from belonging in the past. It may mean moving between old rituals - food, dance, language - and new ones emerging from technology and global connection. It means recognizing that belonging is not static, but layered. Geography creates the container, people decide what to fill it with.

There is another element to belonging on an island: memory. Puerto Rico does not forget easily. The land carries the weight of colonization, hurricanes, economic crises, political corruption and migration. People leave for better opportunities on the mainland, but they remain tied back to the island through family, culture and longing. Puerto Ricans abroad will tell you they never really stop belonging, no matter how many years pass or how far they go.

That memory extends to individuals, too. To live there is to accept that the island remembers you. Places hold weight. A street corner where you once talked to a special person until sunrise, a beach you walked at night, a club where you first heard a favorite song. These aren't just settings. They become coordinates in the geography of belonging. When you return, the place is still there, even if you have changed.

For me, Puerto Rico is not just another location on the map. It is a place where memory and desire intersect. The geography of belonging there is not abstract, but felt in the body. The air is heavy with salt. The sound of music carries through the block at night. Conversations spill into the streets. Everything feels closer, because it is. The ocean defines the boundary, and within it, life has a density that is rare elsewhere.

Belonging there is not automatic. It requires moving with rhythms that already existed, listening more than speaking, and letting the island's shape dictate your own pace. But when it happens, it feels absolute. On the mainland, belonging can be scattered across endless options, diluted by movement. On an island, it is concentrated. You either belong or you don't.

That's what makes Puerto Rico different, and why it feels like more than a place. It is a container that demands presence. And presence is rare now, in a world of distraction and endless feeds. To belong there is to commit not just to the land, but to the people who make it what it is.

The phrase "the geography of belonging" itself is a reminder. Belonging is not just social or emotional, but also geographic. It is shaped by borders you cannot move and oceans you cannot cross without leaving. For me, Puerto Rico embodies that truth more clearly than almost anywhere else I've traveled to. It teaches that belonging is not about scale, but about depth; not about efficiency, but about memory; not about optimization, but about presence.

In an age where so much culture feels weightless, flattened into digital feeds, places can remain heavy, dense and unforgettable. That is the geography of belonging. Where do you belong?