Perhaps Thomas Aquinas was not so far off when he claimed, "No one becomes compassionate unless he suffers." I take this less as a mandate for medieval masochism than an indecorous call to embrace our own authentic experience. I've become suspicious of the unblemished life. Maybe the heart must be broken, like a child's prize honeycomb, for the real sweetness to come out. Although something inside us yearns to walk on air, never touching the ground, compassion brings us down to earth. It has been likened to the lotus, whose exquisite, fragrant blossom grows out of the murk and mire.
— Marc Ian Barasch, Field Notes on the Compassionate Life