“Darkness cannot drive out
darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do
that” - Martin Luther King Jr.
This quote was from Martin
Luther King’s book, written in 1957. If you ask most people what that they know
about King, they will mention his famous “I have a dream” speech from 1963.
This was the point in his life in which he was most known, he presented his
speech on the March of Washington but he wasn’t the only one to talk that day.
He was just the most significant. Undoubtedly, he was an inspiring man with a
set of moral values which helped him in his successes but he wasn’t born
famous. He grew up in similar conditions to many black Americans around the
time of his birth but not all of them are still talked about today. What is so
unorthodox about King that led for him to become such a role model that people
wanted to assassinate him because he was so effective? His attitude.
“Forgiveness is not an
occasional act, it is a permanent attitude”
In a world surrounded by unfairness
it is easy to be aggravated. It is not, however, easy to do something
constructive with this aggravation. A sign of a leader is adhering to your
views, whether others agree or not and this involves moral values that are fixed
within yourself- beliefs that cannot be changed. One factor in the success of
King was his attitude- he knew that he was in the right and kept a positive
attitude to be his inspiration through life. The difference between him and any
average person was being inspired by his goal of equality and letting nothing
get in his way. It is so easy in life to be distracted and to divert to another
path because something seems appealing in the short term but having a long term
goal set in stone, was his means for success. His attitude sets him apart from
us. Generally, people don’t realise how easy it is to alter an attitude and
decide that every experience is a positive thing as we learn from mistakes. The
one major thing that we can learn from him is to keep a positive attitude to everything
we do and that is how we can succeed.
“The ultimate tragedy is
not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by
the good people”
All the way through his life,
King preached against violence. We can now see why. Violence was the end of
him. He was killed in a cowardly way by someone who realised there were no
words left to say that could disagree with King’s attitude. It was so
relentless, that the only way of silencing it was silencing him. His killer was
stupid. It was too late to stop the preach of his frame of mind, it had spread
too far. They tried to put out his light but King had passed his flame to so
many people, touched so many hearts, that he would never be silenced. He may
have been killed, but he would have died one day, as everybody does. His life
may have been cut short but it’s better to live for just 40 years doing what he
did than 100 years of a life of an individual touching nobody- King lives on
through his values which have arguably transformed America. He should live on
and you have the ability to let him. How? By not staying silent when wrong is
being done, you are sending on his message, not just helping people but
replacing the darkness with light.
