“Hair shirts, really, what is the point?” She gave the impression of a faint, dramatic shudder, and Pen smiled despite himself. She added more tartly… - Lois McMaster Bujold

It indicates a deep confusion of thinking to mistake one's own discomfort for a benefit to another.

As the week wore on, Ivan contemplated the merits of inertia as a problem-solving technique with growing favor.

He's not even a mad scientist. He's merely a very upset engineer.

All great human deeds both consume and transform their doers. Consider an athlete, or a scientist, or an independent business creator. In service of their goals they lay down time and energy and many other choices and pleasures; in return, they become most truly themselves. A false destiny may be spotted by the fact that it consumes without transforming, without giving back the enlarged self. Becoming a parent is one of these basic human transformational deeds. By this act, we change our fundamental relationship with the universe- if nothing else, we lose our place as the pinnacle and end-point of evolution, and become a mere link. The demands of motherhood especially consume the old self, and replace it with something new, often better and wiser, sometimes wearier or disillusioned, or tense and terrified, certainly more self-knowing, but never the same again.