When disaster strikes resist the temptation to scream 'Why Me?' writes Diane Southam. Try asking 'Why not me?' It’s far more empowering

Water has played a big part in my life this year. Even as I write I’m struggling to concentrate because Bob the Builder is busy drilling up the road outside the front door of my temporary (more of that later) home.

I'm also finding it hard to resist a self-pitying whinge that goes something like this: Out of all the houses in this street why did the water main have to burst outside mine?

While basking in the sun on a bakingly hot Thai beach in early January this year, we read in an English newspaper that back home it was a mere -8° Celsius. And yes, I’m afraid we gloated smugly, very smugly — but not for long.

We returned home in the middle of the night to squelching carpets, caved in ceilings, wonky walls, flooded floors, sodden (new) furniture, and no heating or electricity. A pipe had burst in the attic. And the temperature was still below freezing.

Oddly enough, despite the fact that the house was uninhabitable and many of our possessions had to be written off, for the first time in my life I didn't rant and rage, ‘Why me?’ Family and friends were amazed that I seemed to be taking the disaster in my stride.

The reason for my newly acquired equanimity was that I'd just come from Khao Lak, the Thai resort worst hit by the 2004 Tsunami. While there I’d spoken with people who'd lost family, friends, livelihoods and who'd experienced the trauma of being swept up by the wave and deposited a couple of kilometres inland. Some local people had since developed such a fear of the sea that they’d moved to the North of the country. On New Year's Day we’d visited a Buddhist temple where the monks showed us photographs of countless bloated bodies floating in the sea. Even the Emperor of Thailand had lost his grandson in Khao Lak.

Our flood seemed minor in comparison — we’d suffered no loss of life or limb and still had a home, albeit a very wet one. We also had the good fortune to be insured — unlike one poor flood-afflicted woman in our area who’d also been away during the cold spell and had missed her insurance renewal deadline by one day. Nor could I forget that exactly a year before to the day that the Tsunami had struck we’d been staying in the Sri Lankan resort of Unawatuna, and that too had been virtually wiped out by the Tsunami.

In relatively affluent countries we sometimes suffer more when disaster strikes because of a misplaced sense of entitlement. I'll never forget returning from a drought-ridden West Africa some years back, where I'd watched uncomplaining women walking miles every day for water, and switching on the television at home to see a tearful woman on the local news indignant that a hosepipe ban meant she’d have to water her extremely large garden with a watering can. It comes as no surprise then that the 'Why me's?' of this world are more inclined to suffer from depression.

A liberating antidote to having a victim mentality is the acquisition of a gratitude mentality. By gratitude I mean gratitude in the positive sense — not in the 'Phew, thank God that isn't happening to me', schadenfreude-sense, that in years gone by prompted our fellow country-folk to picnic at public hangings. Thanks to the likes of reality television, negative gratitude such as this is still around today; in the comfort of our living rooms we can watch people being fired, evicted, made to eat live worms, or whatever.

Positive gratitude brings its own rewards. According to SGI President Daisaku Ikeda, 'Instead of being grateful because we are happy, the feeling of gratitude itself actually brings us happiness.'

Along with the rest of the human race Buddhists experience suffering, but when we chant Nam Myoho Renge Kyo we do so because we believe we can transform our suffering and create value out of any situation, however negative. Ikeda also says that, 'It is important to have a sufficiently elevated life-condition so that you will be able to calmly accept whatever happens in life, striving to put problems into proper perspective and solving them with a positive attitude.' When the going gets tough, chanting, more than anything else, strengthens my resilience and elevates my life condition.

Neither my partner nor I had to take time off work on account of the flood. Courtesy of our insurance company we were moved first to the best hotel in town and then to a very comfortable house in the centre of town where we are still — it took six months for our house to dry out, and the builders have only just moved in.

Some of the building and decorating work they’re getting stuck into needed doing anyway, so when we do move back it’ll be into a much better home. The insurance company also has a new for old' replacement policy — say no more. The insurance assessor has turned out to be one of the nicest people I’ve ever met.

I still find it incredible that such a transparent, innocuous-looking substance like Water has the power to give or take life. On a sub-atomic level, half a glass of water supposedly has enough potential power locked up in it to keep the City of London going for two weeks.

When we finally got to see the pipe in the attic which had turned our lives upside down, we were amazed to see that the burst bit was only a couple of centimetres long.

Powerful stuff water. Powerful stuff Nam Myoho Renge Kyo.