It would be wonderful to believe that we can exercise "universal love" or "universal empathy" toward everyone, without any discrimination or judgment or preference. Every human life is equally valuable to us, and there's no reason to prefer any one person over any other.
While this is a very nice and utopian view of humanity, it's not very reflective of how our minds actually work in the real world.
You don't care about everyone equally – you prefer some people over others. One of the most obvious examples of this is the fact that we often care more about the well-being of our family and friends over that of a completely random stranger.
The reality is that if you had to choose between saving the life of a family member vs. the life of a random stranger – you're going to show a clear preference toward your family member and secondarily toward a friend i.e. someone you know on a personal level.
Of course it is possible to empathize with anyone if given the chance. Anyone can theoretically become a friend. Basically, it's far easier to empathize with people who we can personally identify (with at least a name or a face), rather than if they are some abstraction (like a number or a statistic).
Let's say that you hear/read about 100 strangers dying from some other part of the world vs. 1000 strangers dying, your empathetic response doesn't become 10x more intense, even though there are 10x as many deaths. Once you start thinking about large groups of people, you're thinking about something abstract and numerical, not something you can empathize with on any real personal level.
Like it or not there are real limitations in your ability to care and empathize with everyone to an equal degree. When you care about a person in any meaningful way it takes up physical and mental energy – time, effort, planning, emotional investment, money, etc. Simply put no one has an infinite amount of these things to give to the world. Waiting for you is the existential trap of wanting to "save the world". When you inevitably realize that you can't it can make you feel very depressed and frustrated with everything.
In the spirit of altruism, it can be tempting to donate a little money toward every charity you come across. A few dollars here, a few dollars there can make you "feel good" about yourself and believe you are contributing and making a difference.
But if you are giving away time and money without proper discretion, and without doing research, you might be wasting a lot of your own time and money that could be spent in more effective ways. Altruism toward strangers is good, but within reason and using proper discretion.