World of Warcraft is a feeling

Life can be simplistically related to elements of World of Warcraft, in order to put the futility of the daily grind in perspective.

The first material financial milestone in a young person's life is a car. The car is like the mount you get at Level 40. You save, and save, and save. You spend time advancing levels (from your L's to your P's) in order to get to a sufficient level in order to ride the mount/drive the car reliably. Your University education is your epic mount. Once again, you save, and save, and save, and then save a lot more, because it's a lot more expensive. In fact, its so expensive that you need a loan in order to pay for it. But eventually you get it, and it feels good. Never mind that you're paying off the loan for the next 10 years (levels). The epic flying mount is your house. This is so expensive that you need another loan, and this loan is so big they gave it a special name. It's called a "mortgage". You'll be paying this off for the rest of your life. After that, you don't really have any material financial milestones. You can go raid (work) for hours on end to acquire more money, and more items. You just keep accumulating junk and grinding away to get more of this junk, grinding grinding grinding, until your "subscription runs out" (you die).

I guess the secret is to be content with the amount of junk you have, and to avoid lusting after more junk. Because in the end, it's just junk.