Compassion should broaden understanding without erasing responsibility.

Seeing why someone acted as they did should make the picture bigger, not blank out the part where they chose. Explanation and excuse get collapsed constantly, in both directions: people refuse to understand for fear of excusing, or understand so thoroughly that agency disappears. Neither leaves the person their full dignity, since being responsible is part of being taken seriously.

Try holding both in the same sentence when you talk about someone’s failure, including your own. Here is what was happening, and here is what I chose within it. That sentence is harder to say and much more accurate than either half alone.