I love how you end with such a powerful idea: "Recognizing the suffering of others can have us care about reality more, and care for truth more so that we can understand why there is suffering and how to reduce that suffering." One thing that continuously permeates through the ages of this life I am living right now is the constant of people telling me how by helping others, they end up helping themselves!

Pausing on this note for a few seconds, at the very least, one can find out that even this very fact actually helps us liberate our selves from ourselves. By helping others, we end up finding about the sufferings of others and work cooperatively along with this person or this person or this group of people to solve such matters. The more a person does that, the more this person starts using the same tricks, consciously or not, on themselves as they see the positive results on others as it is a natural mode of being for consciousness to move toward the light, toward positivity and its own wellbeing. This welfare is in itself the nature of our consciousness! Bliss!!!

As soon as we start to apply this helpful hands and compassion that we extend toward others, we start realizing our power to effect change and, therefore, start to feel empowered. This translates into the belief that one can help themselves. The path to the realization that what we do for others actually helps ourselves too can be a fairly short one, but most definitely always at least successfully gratifying one with equally monumental potential toward oneself as well.

All for one and one for all! Namaste :)