Compassion and its influence

Compassion: a sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others.

This powerful noun is a word that, I believe, everyone has seen or demonstrated sometime in their lives. I also believe it's something every person experiences wether they know it or not. And more often than not, someone has felt compassion for you. Why are we attracted to this concept? I think it's simple. Because it feels good for someone else to have sympathy for you. When I feel down or have felt like I've failed at something, I tend to go to others to 'vent' because I know they can relate to me, or just have some sort of pity. Is that selfish to do? I don't think so.
One of my favorite teachers in High School taught me one of the most influential lessons through compassion. We were having a talk about me and how I have a hard time finding confidence. Especially when I think I have failed at something. In this case, it was not making a show that I wanted to be in very badly. Throughout the conversation she didn't say much, she just let talk. When someone is speaking from the heart, let them speak. I felt that because of that one 'failure', it affected other confidence aspects of my life and I couldn't see my success as much as my failures (like I think most people are raised to think). After my venting session. My teacher sympathized with me about how she had dealt with the same issue growing up (she was compassionate by being at my level and relating to my troubles). That made me feel like I wasn't 'weird' or being a 'baby' for having this issue. She very well could have said, "Sorry, champ. These things happen. You'll get over it". But that approach isn't very beneficial.
She continued to talk about how our we need to look at our, for a lack of better words, 'failures' as growing experiences. Don't look at it as a failure. Look at it as an experience and take away what you can from it. We learn so much from failure. In fact, we grow as a person every time we fail.  By having that compassion for my situation, she made a big impact in my life.
When we show compassion to other people, we may never know how much we're actually doing for them. It may feel like we've done nothing. But coming from someone who has been on the receiving end of compassion, it's priceless. That sympathetic attitude was exactly what I needed to get over that emotional hump.
This is why compassion is so essential in the classroom. It seems like education focuses on our 'failures' rather than our success. This puts people down and they may lose their confidence to get better. A teacher has to be that compassionate, sympathetic resource. They have to be a consistent reminder that it's Ok and NORMAL to do something wrong. People do it every day multiple times. Especially for students that are in the prime of their brain development, teaching them that failure isn't FAILING and that having compassion for others is essential, is something this generation of youth should learn. This, in my belief, can only do more good than bad.