You can only give, what you have received

In terms of childhood personality programming, I’ve had the following empirical observation:
RULE:
“You can only give, what you have received”
Whatever you have received, forms the ceiling of your compassion.
There is no absolute standard here, its all relative.

For example:
If your salary is $60000, and fulfilling all your needs takes up $30000, leaving you with an excess of $30000 for free spending.
In this situation, you can easily feel compassion for anybody earning less than $30000.
But, can you feel compassion for a person earning $100,000? – No right? – because it is much beyond your income.
Another example:
Say you score 75/100 in math. You feel compassionate towards someone who has scored 40 or 60/100.
But will you feel compassion to a person who has scored 90/100? – No right? – because it is much beyond your score.

I’ve seen the care we have received in childhood sets our standards for later life.
For instance, if your partner asks you something that is far above the care you have received, then you simply call it unreasonable/unjustified. Whereas if they ask you something that you have consistently received yourself, then you may immediately do it without any expectation because you feel it was “totally reasonable”.

What determines what is “reasonable” and “unreasonable”?
It is totally relative to what you have received.

Once deep contemplation awakens in you, you access much greater standards of compassion, than was provided to you by what you received as a child/formative years.