One of my favorite quotes by Alan Watts:

…we’ve simply cheated ourselves the whole way down the line. We thought of life by analogy with a journey with a pilgrimage which had a serious purpose at the end – the thing was to get to that end, success or whatever it is or maybe heaven after you’re dead. But we missed the point the whole way along – it was a musical thing, and you were supposed to sing or dance while the music was being played.

There’s a lot more where that came from: