In "Marigolds," how does Lizabeth's compassion shape her understanding of the world?

Lizabeth experiences a moment of true revelation born out of compassion at the climax of the story, after she has taken out her rage and despair on Miss Lottie's marigolds. Early in the story, she and her friends had discussed the marigolds scornfully, thinking them a silly thing for Miss Lottie to cultivate, but the older Lizabeth wonders whether their "preoccupation" with destroying them had something to do with an underlying awareness of how bleak their situation truly was.
The moment of destroying the marigolds Lizabeth describes as "the last act of childhood," and in many ways, this seems to indicate that a new clarity came over Lizabeth in this moment, an understanding of a "kind of reality which is hidden to childhood." If she had not had compassion, Lizabeth might never have experienced the sudden understanding she does here: that Miss Lottie was no "witch" after all, but a "broken old woman who had dared to create beauty in the midst of ugliness." Compassion is what makes Lizabeth realize that, far from being deserving of violence and taunting from children, Miss Lottie has lived in inescapable "squalor" all her life with her disabled son, and she poured all her remaining spirit into cultivating the marigolds.
This realization leaves Lizabeth "awkward and ashamed." She recognizes this moment as "the beginning of compassion," something which eradicates innocence because it forces one to look at the world clearly and understand people in their individual circumstances.
In the final paragraph of the story, Lizabeth notes that, despite her "wild contrition" after she realizes the depths of what she has done, Miss Lottie never planted any more marigolds. Because of the compassion that was born in this moment, however, Lizabeth has returned often to the thought of the "passionate yellow mounds" and been moved by them because of what they represented—something bright and growing in a "barren" world. Although Lizabeth is no longer poor, she recognizes that she, too, has sometimes been forced to "plant marigolds," a phrase which memorializes Miss Lottie. "Planting marigolds" is what Lizabeth, as a compassionate person, must do in order to bring brightness into a life which, with full understanding, can often seem very dark indeed.