It is impossible to consider writing anything without mentioning the tsunami in Thailand. The day after it struck, a callous reporter, from the comfort of his safe studio asked the expert, "Isn't it true that if the authorities in Thailand had built barriers and alarms, the tsunami would not have devastated so many?" There was a silent pause and the expert dryly responded, ."Yes, that is true except that earthquakes and tsunamis don't usually happen in that area."

Nobody expected it to happen, nobody saw it coming. It was not something for which they could be prepared.

However we can expect, and therefore prepare for, a few tsunamis in our own lives even if we rarely see them coming. Our best friend dies suddenly. Our spouse runs off with another. We lose our job. The doctor tells us horrible news. In the blink of an eye something happens that devastates our entire world. It ejects us out of ordinary life and thrusts us into emergency survival mode. These emotional tsunamis are shattering and no one is exempt from them.

So knowing they are coming, that they will happen, what can we do to prepare? Build protective barriers of cynicism and mistrust? Climb to the top of an ivory tower? Hide in bunkers of addiction or denial? Eat right? Exercise? Generate good karma? How do we prepare for the end of all good things and still enjoy all good things?

A while back I had a breast cancer scare. Mostly the scare took shape in my own imaginings as I returned for more and more tests. I imagined losing my hair and trying to hold my job while taking chemotherapy. I could envision the ragged scar--my gross deformity--from a mastectomy. I began to make more jokes about reaching the age when I wouldn't need parole. I would leave prison one piece at a. time.

I could see my tsunami coming and I cowered, waiting for it to wipe me out. It never came. Of course, I still have the sensation that it is still waiting out there, just over the horizon, waiting to strike when I least expect it.

I therefore cannot claim to have met my impending ordeal with heart or courage or even composure but when the storm was passed, I saw my life a little differently. I saw my body differently. I saw cancer sufferers, survivors, victims very differently.

Disaster can make us compassionate. It can snap us out of the rut of indifference and the false security that something like that could never happen to us. Disaster is the unpleasant wake-up call to our humanity. (I despise the callous quotes people casually throw around: "What doesn't kill me makes me stronger." Who wants to be stronger? I want to be peaceful, content and safe.)

Catastrophe does reveal the truth of a person's heart. We can posture as smug bystanders (like Job's friends) or intellectualize and analyze (the famous reporter) or we can respond with softness of heart.

When we are in the midst of our own disaster and struggling to breathe from one moment to the next, do we store up blame and bitterness and strike out? Do we matter? Crumble? Do we have a sense of humor? Do we fall down and stand up again? How do we respond to personal defeat?

The disaster in Asia is on a scale beyond our imagination. It feels too big and far away, even though we know our hearts should bleed and our hands should reach out to help, comfort and rebuild. Perhaps it is more within our daily conviction to treat each person we meet as a tsunami survivor. We can overcome so much with a little encouragement. (Elizabeth Haysom, Fluvanna Review, January 27, 2005).

Elizabeth Haysom is presently incarcerated at the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women in Troy, Virginia. This column is one of a series, published under the general heading 'Glimpses from Inside.'