What's remarkable here is that King frames hate not as a moral failing in others, but as an exhausting weight that damages the person carrying it—a practical argument wrapped in spiritual language. He's saying something almost counterintuitive: choosing love isn't about being naive or passive toward injustice, but about preserving your own capacity to act and think clearly under crushing circumstances. A person locked in resentment becomes mentally colonized by the very forces they oppose, which is why those who work in difficult fields—emergency medicine, social justice, parenting—often speak of "compassion fatigue" as something you must actively defend against, just as King did.