My son is adopted. While he is kind, incredibly smart, athletic, and way too funny for words, there are some traits which don't come naturally for him. He has little to no empathy for others and doesn't have much compassion either. His lack of those traits comes directly from his birth mom's bad choices while pregnant with him and the traumas and inconsistencies he endured during his first 10 years of life. (I adopted him shortly after his 10th birthday). Teaching him to be empathetic and compassionate is a part of my everyday life. I take every example I can to point out others' emotions in an effort to have him start recognizing others' feelings. It's something that will likely take years and years to teach and will probably never be a natural, instinctive reaction for my son. He has a heart of gold, though... I just have to help learn to bring that out more often.

So I was happy to read this article which states that kindness and compassion can be taught through meditation. People who practice meditation with a focus in those areas actually experience changes in the area of the brain which promotes those traits. The study involved 16 monks and practitioners who had meditated for at least 10,000 hours in their lifetime and 16 novices who had only recently been taught meditation. Those who have meditated more had increased brain response to introduced noises (such as a woman crying).

While it's obviously unrealistic for the average Joe to meditate more than 10,000 hours, I think the finding that areas of the brain can be retrained to be more compassionate is very interesting.