I am a loving and compassionate person.

Somebody learns how you take your tea and never asks again. Somebody else remembers that November is difficult for you and sends a message in the first week of it, saying nothing much.

Both are small enough to miss. Neither involves a declaration. Whatever love is in the abstract, this is nearly always its working form: a set of facts about you that another person bothered to hold on to. Compassion runs the same way - mostly it is evidence that you were paying attention when there was no particular reason to.