A hard season can make you kinder, but only if you let it. Bitterness is the easier default.

Suffering does not automatically produce compassion. It produces sensitivity, and sensitivity can run either way: toward recognising the same thing in other people, or toward resenting anyone who has never had to deal with it. The second route requires no effort at all, which is why it is where most people end up. Kindness after a hard stretch is a choice made repeatedly, not a reward for having endured.

Watch for the moment you want to dismiss somebody’s smaller problem because yours was worse. That is the fork. Say something useful instead, particularly to the person whose difficulty looks trivial next to yours.