Showing Empathy and Compassion

🌼 Is Empathy and Compassion learned or innate?

Recently, my mother told me about her encounter with my empathy when I was little. I was always a tearful child by her account, too sensitive for my own good. 

One day, I came to her in a tizzy, babbling about something as I gestured to the garden. When she came to see, I had found a butterfly with a ripped and broken wing, my trembling baby finger gently petting it's back as I begged her to fix it. I'd found him hurt and wanted to help him, but upon realizing I couldn't, I was completely inconsolable.

I think about this story when I feel insecure about my emotions, an overactive empathy engine running on tears. 

For some, they lose this painful side of empathy as they grow, their compassion slowly becoming locked behind doors of uncertainty and insecurity.
'Tears are shameful,' 'Why do you care?' 'It's just a bug.'
And yet there's an innate deepness to the child's heart, wanting to relate and help.

Sometimes it's hard to relearn this trait as an adult. You want to have that bond and connection, but it's just not becoming of an adult who needs to be strong. What is a person to do when they want to share these painful feelings but they don't want to feel them?

I think there are things we can learn from childhood. The capacity for Compassion is in everyone, Empathy is an active feeling we can express, and it's not learning how to have it, it's learning how to unlock it again. Now under safer hands where we can cast and reel as needed. 

🌼 Is Empathy and Compassion learned or innate?