I talk to a lot of people who say their goal is to “change the world” or “take over the world.” I fit into the former group, because I don’t think one can take over the world without things getting messy.
Changing the world is an interesting subject, though. There are many motivations for wanting to change the world. For me, it is immortality, or at least one perspective of it. Not to get too religious here, but to lay the foundation, I’m an atheistic, worm-food-when-you-die kind of person. I don’t believe in classical immortality (living and breathing forever), but in an existential sense, you can be immortal to everyone else.
Think about yourself for a second. When you die, perhaps those thoughts (of you, by you) go away. Think about the people around you who you know. When you die, they are certainly impacted, although they remember you. Now think about everyone else, mainly those who know of you but have never met you. When they think of you, it is in relation to something you have said or done that impacts them. Unless they hear about your passing on the news, the thoughts of who you are no different if you are dead or alive. To them, you might as well still be alive. If what you do has a great enough impact on enough people, stories of who you are and what you’ve done can be carried along to people who might not have even been born in your lifetime.
Change the world. Create or do something that is forever remembered. Be immortal.
I agree that with every person you come in contact with you change them a little, and I would like to think that I too could make a huge impact on the world and change it forever. But I personally don’t think I’m that memorable. That said I do try to make a significant enough mark on the people I do know to ensure my posterity with them.
(That and I gave up trying to take over the world because Captain Hammer “Corporate Tool” kept showing up.)
Also known as leaving a “legacy”. The biggest impact for the smallest amount of work is to help others, which in turn ends up helping you. I suppose if you do that enough, you can leave a legacy that will exist longer than you. Or just become a really badass baseball player, like the Mic or the Great Bambino :)