Transmute mercy by its other variant, Compassion.

Synonyms aren't synonyms really, as we perceive. Each word has its own inherent meaning, varying in its shade with the other word that we think to be its synonym.
Mercy and compassion, for instance. Mercy presupposes some one in a miserable state, beseeching of some favour. The one who extends such favour, doing mercy , subjects himself to twin things. He dispenses as well as incurs.
He dispenses relief but incurs a debt for himself for having boosted his ego. Ego, in its ordinary form, that a component of human personality that bosses over the person , making it its slave. This slavery augments each time a good in the shape of mercy is dispensed.
That is not to say that the act of extending relief to a needy has its negative consequence. The negativity is there definitely , if its misconstrued synonym is not comprehended and digested.
That misconstrued synonym is compassion .
Compassion is mercy's look alike, but not mercy , in fact.
Compassion is of an entirely different wave length.
A beggar can't be chooser not eligible to dispense mercy , nor would any one believe even if such dispensation arises by default or by any reason.
But compassion never presupposes a dispensation , nor a stature , nor a competency, nor even its exhibition in a manifest form of giving.
Compassion presupposes just one thing. An emotional awakening and personal identification with the subject or object that triggers compassion.
Compassion leads to service , extended in whatever form, visible or invisible. Compassion just happens, may be without the external world ever cognisant of that. Compassion may go unrecognised , but mercy would not just fetch recognition, good name, applaud and like things, but would also leave the doer in progressive debts that compassion alone might redeem as much as mercy would keep augmenting.
That is to say do mercy but go a stage ahead too. Transmute mercy by its better variant, compassion.