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I'd say empathy is a social skill learned through experience or proper education.
It can still be distorted and applied selectively or even outright ignored.
And at its core, it can be both simple and complex. Whatever emotions you feel and why can be felt by anyone else in the same way, but perhaps for different things.
So the main thing empathy asks is to understand that, to accept that having their experience and knowledge from their life is what guides their decisions, just as your own guide yours.
We don't know the same things and we should appreciate that difference, even though we might not agree with it.
Empathy for animals is easier to have because they are simpler to gauge and direct in their actions. Less of a headache to deal with the why's.