Ursula K. Le Guin on Suffering and Getting to the Other Side of Pain

Fulfillment... is a function of time. The search for pleasure is circular, repetitive, atemporal... It has an end. 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... The thing about working with time, instead of against it, ...is that it is not wasted. Even pain counts.