Fulfillment

Fulfillment is a function of time.

The search for pleasure is
circular, repetitive, atemporal.

The variety seeking of
the spectator,
the thrill hunter,
the promiscuous,
always ends in the same place.

It comes to the end
and has to start over.

It is not a journey and return,
but a closed cycle,
a locked room,
a cell.

It is not until an act occurs
within the landscape
of the past and the future
that it is a human act.

Loyalty, which asserts the
continuity of past and future,
binding time in a whole,
is the foot of mans strength;

there is no good to be done without it.

-- Ursula K. LeGuin, The Dispossessed
(arranged quote)