If you are not living with a whole heart now, the end of the world poses no threat; your life is already gone. Life is only as valuable as our presence to enjoy it. To miss the beauty of the moment because you are preparing to protect yourself from the next one, is to trade a precious gem for a cheap trinket.
For example, Americans seem reluctant to take on Shakespeare because you don't think you're very good at it - which is rubbish. You're missing out here.
Sometimes the course of our lives depends on what we do or don't do in a few seconds, a heartbeat, when we either seize the opportunity, or just miss it. Miss the moment and you never get a chance again.
The Buddha's insight into the middle way is not simply about a balance between extremes. This conventional understanding misses the deeper revelation of the middle way as being the very nature of unexcelled enlightenment. The middle way is an invitation to leap beyond nirvana and samsara and to realize the unborn Buddha mind right in the middle of everywhere.
It is possible to fail in many ways . . . while to succeed is possible only in one way (for which reason also one is easy and the other difficult - to miss the mark easy, to hit it difficult).
Even when I was Miss World, I did all the dressing up I could, so the pretty face thing was done. But it was never about just looking pretty with the crown, I always wanted to make it more than that - I wanted to make it about beauty with a purpose. So I carried that into my films as well.
It's a mystery to me how anyone ever gets any nourishment in this place. They must eat their meals standing up by the window so as to be sure of not missing anything.