How to build a career that can change the world (or at least a little part of it)

I stood directly where countless people were ritually sacrificed to please their gods. A heavy musk of limestone and bat droppings plugged my nostrils.

From inside the top of the Mayan temple, I looked with awe at the ancient plaza and surrounding rainforest, then with trepidation at the snoozing fecal bombers hanging above my head. Since I didn’t feel like getting bat poop on my new Tommy Hilfiger shirt, I moved to the exterior. The sound of growling panthers—just monkeys, I was assured—echoed between my ears. Looking down from the external ledge, I wondered how I ever made it up a staircase that seemed more suited to the special abilities of Spiderman than for an ignorant, white American tourist pretending to be Tarzan for a day. How would I make it back to ground level?

Vertigo nearly gave me a tutorial. It wouldn’t have been the first time someone tumbled down a pyramid in the middle of a Central American jungle teeming with the willies. But it probably would have been the most amusing, at least for the locals.

I slowly regained my balance and heard Raúl, our personal guide, telling my traveling partner and me that we needed to get going. It was late afternoon, and unless we wanted to get caught fending off venomous snakes, alone, in the dense darkness of rural Guatemala, we’d have to make our way quickly to the bottom.

But I remained where I was, unwilling to give up an extended moment in which my energy and sense of purpose suddenly seemed more honest and vital than at any other time of my life. Despite the dangers, I was ready to burst with an amplified awareness of joy and harmony. I felt like a vibrating tuning fork trapped within a shaken bottle of Dom Pérignon. My blood was full of darting hummingbirds. I had the urge to cry and shout and laugh all at once. I was alive!

If I walked away, I wasn’t sure I’d ever experience that kind of feeling again.

But as I finally crept down the pyramid, giant step by giant step on my throbbing butt, I came to realize that life is more special—and more delicate—than we generally perceive it to be. Tikal, that once-bustling Mayan capital city, was now empty and overgrown. The civilization, despite its rich artistry and cosmic wisdom, likely disappeared because it got too greedy, exploited its natural resources past what was sustainable and couldn’t see beyond primal warfare as a solution to its most difficult problems.

Trekking back through the tropical wonderland of alien-like flora and fauna, I was instilled with a desire to make my life count for something big. I didn’t want our civilization to end like the Maya’s. I wanted to prevent our demise—by changing the world.

Back home, civilized reality hit me hard: I had to work for a living. But my new career as a graphic designer now seemed restrictive and insignificant.

Eleven years later, I’m still working for a living. But I’m also adding meaning to my career whenever I can while hoping to discover new, creative, and beneficial ways to contribute to the flourishing of our civilization and its non-human residents. Some people say I’m too ambitious, too full of myself. And they’re right—partially.

I am full of myself—and of you, your mommy and daddy, your grandparents, your great grandparents, their pets, and everyone and everything else that has ever existed on this planet. We are all made of the same atoms that have been around since the beginning of our universe. And we share them constantly.

I’m not the exclusive owner of benevolent ambition. I don’t lease out the fierce inner drive to do something important. And I’m not alone in wanting my work to have significance.

No, we can’t all be destined to win a Nobel Prize. But we can each build our careers in a way that gives us the best shot at doing something revolutionary. Here’s how: