Imagine what it would be like to climb out of the secure watery world that you have always known onto an exposed blade of grass to wait for a transformation to take place, a transformation from the inside.
Impatiently waiting for your skin to dry in the sun, you prepare to break out of your former body, unfurl your wings, and fly into the air. You’ve waited all your life for this moment, when you emerge as a dragonfly. How hard it must be to wait for the transformation to be complete. At last you take off, forever changed, leaving behind the empty outer shell as the sole evidence of your former existence.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved
Mike Powell 
And for butterflies and moths emerging from their pupal cases as well. I would love to see this process unfold in real time. I wonder if they emerge at night to avoid being a meal for a predator.
That’s an interesting question. My understanding is that dragonflies emerge in the early morning, but i don’t know about butterflies.
That beats aging!
To be able to mate before death. Continuation of the species is the constant driving force.
Exactly. The life of a dragonfly (and most insects for that matter) is pretty short and perpetuation of the species is, as you noted, a primary motivating factor for them.