Can I Change the World Alone?

Can I, one soul among billions, truly change the world?

It is the kind of question that begs for a simple “no.”

And yet—how dishonest it would be to dismiss it so quickly,

as if a “yes” were foolishness not worth a second thought.

For saying “no” outright denies even the tiniest ember of wonder,

and saying “yes” assumes a world so perfect,

so pliable to desire,

that a single hand could shape its course.

But the world—

this world—

is far from perfect.

Perhaps it never was.

Not even in the days when humans were few,

and the earth breathed with more silence than smoke.

There was once a man—

just one—

who discovered how to summon fire from stone,

no longer needing to wait for a jealous sky

to throw a lightning bolt into the trees.

Later came another,

who saw in the quiet soil behind his home

a future full of golden grain,

and chose to plant,

rather than wander the wilds

gathering what grew by chance.

But not long after came others,

who dipped arrows in flame,

and aimed them at their neighbor’s fields

out of nothing but spite.

And when the mammoths had all fallen,

a man who had once hunted them

thought to keep animals close,

safe in pens beside his home,

no longer chasing shadows through snow.

Artists came too—

their fingers stained with earth and dreams—

painting their myths upon cave walls,

especially images of those who hunted mammoths,

but they never once sketched the man

tending his flock in the early dawn.

And then, cities rose.

And flags.

And languages that bound people together—

and others that tore them apart.

Some dreamed of harmony in shared speech,

but others forged weapons to silence every tongue

that was not their own.

Still—there were those I admire most:

those who saw the invisible threads of the cosmos,

who crafted wheels that turned without horses,

and wings of metal that sliced through clouds.

There was one who learned

that light moves faster than anything imagined,

and that even the atom, so small,

could be broken further still.

But knowledge does not choose its masters.

Others took that sacred learning

and shaped it into fire meant to devour cities—

dropping it from machines

that had once been symbols of flight and freedom.

And one man,

drunk on the illusion of his own blood,

marched toward conquest,

believing he was more than mortal,

waging war upon the world itself.

Then came the singers—

the dreamers—

those who believed peace might bloom

from long hair and guitars.

But soon behind them marched

a different song,

a different rhythm,

heavy boots on cold concrete.

All these figures blur now,

spinning through my thoughts

like ghosts in a restless wind.

But one thing—

one truth—

remains:

None of them, not one,

truly changed the world alone.

Not in its entirety.

What they changed

was the world they could touch—

the corner they called their own.

Yet even that,

small as it seemed,

rippled outward.

Not always as they intended,

but always, somehow, it mattered.

So now I ask myself—

Do I want to change the world?

To try, alone,

to offer something

that might bend history toward light?

But what if I’m misunderstood?

What if my gift

becomes a weapon in stranger hands?

Could I bear that weight?

Maybe it is better not to change the world alone.

Maybe the world should not be shaped by one hand,

but by many—together.

Because in the end,

this world does not belong to me.

It belongs to all of us.

a poetic prose essay and cover image by OpenAI, based on an original text & idea