I fill my heart with compassion so that I can be of better service to others.

Anyone who has done a year of care work knows the arithmetic. Compassion is not infinite in practice, whatever it may be in theory. It runs out somewhere around month eight, and what replaces it is competence performed on autopilot.

Filling comes first for a reason. Sleep, a weekend belonging to nobody else, one friendship where you are not the strong one.

These sound like indulgences and function as fuel.

Service drawn from an empty person is thin, and everybody can taste it. The ones who manage it over decades are almost always those who took the refilling seriously long before they felt they had earned it.