For Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., nonviolence was not passive or polite. It was a demanding way of life, rooted in a fierce commitment to the dignity and humanity of all people, including one’s perceived or real opponents. Love, as King understood it, was not sentimentality; it was disciplined, courageous, and active. It required choosing relationship over retaliation, truth over convenience, and justice over comfort.

While Dr. King’s leadership matters deeply, MLK Day is not meant to enshrine a single hero. Movements are carried forward by many hands and many hearts. This day asks us not simply to remember a man, but to remember a way of living and responding to the world. It is a reminder that the work of justice is collective, unfinished, and alive.

On August 28, 1963, standing before nearly 250,000 people at the Lincoln Memorial, King spoke of “the fierce urgency of now.” He warned against the “tranquilizing drug of gradualism” and insisted that democracy’s promises could not be endlessly deferred. Two years later, he sharpened that call: tomorrow is today. History, he reminded us, does not pause. There is such a thing as being too late.

More than half a century later, those words still land with unsettling clarity. Despite real progress in laws and legislation, we continue to witness violence and oppression rooted in race, religion, gender, ability, and identity. The headlines change, but the underlying questions remain: Is it possible to live in a world where people are truly seen beyond categories? Are we moving steadily toward human dignity, or circling familiar patterns with greater awareness but insufficient transformation?

Our founder, J. Krishnamurti, offers a parallel challenge. He reminds us that when we see through our own conditioning and truly perceive another, we understand that we are the other. Without inner transformation, there can be no lasting transformation of the world. Justice, then, is not only something we advocate for outwardly; it is something we must live inwardly, in how we see, respond, and relate.

MLK Day invites us to hold both urgency and hope. History shows us that change is slow, uneven, and often met with resistance. It also shows us that progress is real, that courage multiplies, and that new generations continue to insist on dignity and equity. The question is not whether change is possible, but whether we are willing to participate in it now.

Nonviolence asks something of us. It demands attention, restraint, imagination, and love that is always fresh. It asks us to resist despair, resist simplification, and resist the comfort of believing the work belongs to the past.

Tomorrow is today.