What's striking here is King's framing of hate not as a moral failing but as an *exhausting weight*—he's describing it as practically inefficient, not just ethically wrong. Most appeals to love sound otherworldly, but King grounds his choice in something grimly realistic: the person who nurses hatred becomes their own prisoner, spending energy that could remake the world on keeping the fire of resentment alive. When someone we know carries a years-long grudge—refusing to speak to an estranged parent, harboring bitterness toward a former friend—we often notice how it seems to *cost* them more than the other person, which is precisely what King means. His decision wasn't about being the bigger person; it was about refusing to let the other side's cruelty become a second sentence he carried around inside himself.