The above is a deceptively simple question and one to which the answer, of course, is as varied as the people you might ask it of as we approach September’s vote.

The debate so far would suggest that at one end of the scale, we’re a nation of poor wee souls, much safer shackled to a United Kingdom that gifts us stability and security in the face of choppy global waters and saves us from the hassle of making crucial political decisions for ourselves. At the other end, we’re a proud nation of untold prosperity, a nirvana of wealth and social justice primed to emerge after our divorce from our oppressors in Westminster.

For anyone in between and still grappling with their identity, the Economist helpfully informed us recently that being Scottish means painting a Saltire on your face, wearing a Jimmy hat and shouting at nothing in particular. Glad that’s sorted then.

The truth is that very few of us will see ourselves in these broad-brushed caricatures of Scottish identity. I certainly don’t. In fact, the more I force myself to think about it, the clearer it becomes that I don’t have a bloody clue what it means to be Scottish.

Or at least I didn’t until last month.

For much of last month I watched the news from Ukraine and Gaza unfold with growing horror. I watched families and lives devastated by the actions of people they have never met for reasons they will never understand. I watched worlds blown to smithereens in the shape of aircraft debris raining from the sky and family homes obliterated by mortar shells. And one more thing.

I read about a father in Gaza gathering the remains of his two-year old son in a shopping bag.

The hours of news coverage I’d watched and images of grief and destruction I’d seen up until I read that tweet were horrific, but there was something otherworldly and unfathomable about them. My world does not involve passenger planes being shot out of the sky and guided missiles annihilating families in their homes.

But I do have a two-year-old son. I worry about him a lot. About him banging his head on the table, watching too much television, not eating enough fruit, sticking his finger in electrical sockets and even about him peeing on the couch.

I don’t ever worry about having to gather his remains in a shopping bag.

The tweet made me feel physically sick, maybe because I have a son the same age, or maybe just because I’m a human being. I watched more news. Rumours emerged that the Malaysian Airlines plane was destroyed by pro-Russian separatists wielding military-issue weapons cataclysmically more sophisticated than the people firing them. Scrolling bars on the screen revealed more children killed by bombs in Gaza for the crime of playing on the beach.

Politicians fell over themselves to condemn one side or the other, depending on which dog they backed in the fight. David Cameron lambasted Hamas for their role in the escalating violence in the Gaza strip; Barack Obama took pot shots at Russia for their role in supporting separatists in Ukraine and, less than 24 hours after the fragments of plane smouldered on the ground and the children were bombed on the beach, the world settled back into the familiar rhythm of powerful people in suits blaming each other for the world’s ills.

Until I read another tweet. The second in one day to stop me in my tracks and change my perspective; 140 characters that made me realise what it means to be Scottish – or at least what I want it to mean.

While Cameron, Obama, Putin and Netanyahu took to our television screens to blame someone else for the bloodshed, Scotland’s government released a statement of its own. Humza Yousaf, Minister for External Affairs and a man I’ve never heard of before and confess to know nothing about, made me feel very proud to be Scottish.

In the statement Yousaf spent little time apportioning blame for the bloodshed (and the little he did was cast upon both sides) and focused instead on the victims, offering refuge and sanctuary in Scotland for Palestinians and people displaced as a result of the conflict in Gaza.

Approaching the referendum, it would be much easier for the government to take a back seat on this dangerously divisive issue, trot out the expected platitudes and move swiftly on to more parochial matters. Immigration, after all, is a toxic political grenade and the media demonisation of refugees and immigrants across the UK means that the government’s offer to accept refugees from the conflict in Gaza is certain to get a mixed reception at best.

But isn’t this what we’re all about as a nation? Isn’t this the social justice I hear people on both sides screaming out for?

I have referendum fatigue. I have a craving for knowledge that has been thwarted by claim and counter-claim about the economy, defence, Europe, currency, borders and oil. I have drawn my own conclusions that, on many of these fronts, nothing much will change significantly.

Men in suits will still blame each other for the world’s ills, we probably won’t have borders, we probably won’t have nuclear weapons in our waters, we’ll probably still use some version of the pound, we’ll probably stay in the EU. Oil, at some point or another, will definitely run out.

All of this matters, of course, but none of it will dictate my reasons for voting Yes in September like what Humza Yousaf and David Cameron have done in the last 24 hours will. Their respective responses to the atrocities in the Gaza strip has solidified in my head what I’ve known in my heart from the outset of this debate – things won’t change until we change them.

We can’t vote for the status quo and hope for something new and improved to emerge as a consequence. We can’t expect to have our faith in politicians restored until we take the chance to ensure that the ones that serve us are the ones we voted for. We can’t condemn those who use violence as a means of resolving conflict while we sit with nuclear weapons on our waters.

Let England lurch to the right. Let Nigel Farage cosy up to the BBC and disseminate his politics of intolerance. Let England leave the EU and close its borders. We don’t have to be part of that.

Let us define what it means to be Scottish as a willingness to welcome and embrace a father who has just had to collect the remains of his son in a shopping bag as a result of a conflict fought by people we don’t know for reasons we’ll never understand.