Do you prefer to tell your story, with your players in the dead center of everything (Your party is always the ones to uncover the secret plot/ finding the long lost McGuffin/ Being the first ones to encounter the BBEG/ etc...)?  Or do you prefer to have your players following in the aftermath of big story beats (The BBEG rolled through town a couple days ago/ an NPC found (McGuffin), but needs the party to transport it to "Place of importance"/ The King is sending them to deal with the court wizards Coup d'etat/ etc...)?

I like to start my players on the outside of big events, working their way into the center bit by bit. That way, once they get there, you now they're invested in the plot since they'll have had to have taken a lot of active steps to advance it. 

If I had a nickel for every time I saw someone post on here about how players weren't invested in their big, front-and-center 'save the world' narrative, then I'd have a good lot of nickels.

I prefer to vary it. They are fairly central, but playing on the sense of sometimes getting swept with bigger events, or hearing about the effects of previous outcomes help link into a larger breathing world. I have characters with friends who are away fighting in wars, that the group has no involvement in directly, and I think it is good to switch it in and out sometimes. 

I often intersperse the "big arch" stuff with almost one-shot adventures or parts of a module, because there's a need for a change of pace now and then. You can ramp up the story along with the levels, but I also expect higher level characters to  become embroiled in events on a larger scale, where they are not the only actors on the stage. 

I think it depends on your playing style as a DM. I usually do a lot of Homebrew campaigns that focus in on personal arcs. If the players though are interested in taking part in say a historical the based event I'll try and incorporate them on the edge so they can start to interact with similar characters but if they aren't interested in they just want to explore the sandbox setup that the world is in I will usually allow for personal success arcs rather than just letting them wander around aimlessly. If however you are doing a module such as tomb of annihilation you're going to have to look at the information that the book provides to help aid you in guiding how to interact with the NPCs that are in that module.

Personally I prefer the sandbox approach. I like to allow the characters to actually explore ideas that they have for a character. Oftentimes my players like to play a standard trope story arc ( The chosen One trope, the redeemed one, the medicine journey, revenge arc etc.) These type of players usually have a character in mind or they're just trying to make your life easier as a DM and they really just want to roleplay or have combat. They know that you need info from them to make stories like these fun but not cheesy/predictable since you can still and your own spin (tropes don't automatically mean bad writing. They are tools that can be used to help aid you in telling the story it's only bad if you make an exact replica of someone elses unless you and your players want that). I make their personal arcs the main focus and if there needs to be an overarching scheme I'll let the players decide if they want to be part of it or not.

So the character may come to the conclusion that some people in the world really are good and not manipulative and come to that conclusion right before the druidic lich bbeg drains the entire ecosystem and all life in it including killing the pc, in order to end one campaign and begin another. 

I run sandbox campaigns and build the adventure and BBEG around what they do and what there character background stories are. Now that might be them reacting to world events, or them finding themselves driving them but I never start a campaign knowing who the BBEG will be if there will be one.