One of my greatest sorrows is that people hold the opinion that progress is the default state of humanity.
This is characterized by the school of thought that says "Why you? If not you, surely someone else will do it. Progress happens with or without you." This is egregious on two counts: (i) The assumption that this statement is itself true, that you have nothing unique to contribute to the collective nature of human progress, and that any and all outcomes from effort that you make would have come around with due time anyways, and (ii) The fact that if this became the predominant school of thought, no one would do anything and nothing would happen because we would all be sitting waiting around for someone to do the thing that we could have done, but were told that someone else would do it anyways.
I do not think that believing in this is productive in any way, regardless of the objective truth of this statement. I can't prove to you that you could make a unique impact on the world empirically, because that would be trying to prove a negative. If I pointed at Elon Musk and said "Look! He's the reason America even has a half-decent space program!", I have no evidence for or against the fact that if he didn't do it, nobody else would have, because that's a hypothetical future.
But I choose to believe that yes, every single human on this planet does have the potential to do things their own, unique way, and to push forth human progress in a way that would not have happened without them. Not a predetermined cascade of already determined events, but a gaping void from which we construct meaning and build our own futures.
Be desperate. Be extraordinary.