An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.
King isn't simply urging altruism—he's making a claim about human *becoming*, suggesting that self-absorption is actually a form of arrested development rather than freedom. The subtlety lies in his word "started": living, for him, is an active verb requiring transcendence, not merely a state we occupy by breathing. When a parent spends years focused only on their child's advancement, then suddenly grasps how their indifference shapes the schools their neighbors attend, they touch what King meant—a genuine enlargement of consciousness that changes what they can see and value, not just what they give away.
“The only way to have a friend is to be one.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.”
Viktor Frankl“Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you ast...”
Rumi“Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.”
Steve Jobs