Remember that happiness is a way of travel and not a destination.
About the author
Roy M. Goodman (1930–2021) was one of the longest-serving members of the New York State Senate and a prominent voice for moderate Republicanism in an era when that still meant something distinct.
Goodman was born in New York City and educated at Harvard University, where he earned both his undergraduate degree and his MBA from Harvard Business School. Before entering politics, he worked in finance and served as New York City’s Commissioner of Finance under Mayor John Lindsay in the late 1960s. He brought that same analytical, numbers-driven mind to the Senate floor, where he became known for his work on fiscal policy, housing and civil liberties.
What made Goodman unusual wasn’t just his longevity. He was a Republican who consistently supported abortion rights, gay rights and gun control at a time when those positions put him at odds with his own party’s national direction. He held his seat anyway, election after election, because his constituents trusted him more than they trusted the party line.
The quote is widely attributed to him, though it has circulated broadly enough that its exact origin is difficult to pin to a single speech or publication. What’s clear is that it fits the man. Goodman was known for plain-spoken observations about public life, and this one captures something he seemed to live by. The idea that waiting to arrive somewhere before allowing yourself to be content is a trap most people never notice they’ve walked into.
The meaning of the quote
Most people treat happiness like a destination on a map. Get the promotion. Finish the degree. Move to the bigger apartment. Find the right person. Once those things happen, the thinking goes, the good feeling will arrive and stay.
Goodman’s point is that happiness lives in the moving, not the arriving. The way you carry yourself through an ordinary day. The attention you bring to a conversation. The small choices you make when no one is watching. Those are the moments that make up a life, and if you’re waiting for some future condition to make them worthwhile, you’ll spend most of your time in a kind of holding pattern.
Hedonic adaptation is the well-documented tendency for people to return to a baseline level of wellbeing after both positive and negative events. You get the raise, feel good for a few weeks, and then the new salary becomes the new normal. The destination you worked toward stops feeling like a destination almost as soon as you reach it. The finish line moves.
Sonja Lyubomirsky, a psychologist at the University of California, has spent decades studying what actually predicts sustained wellbeing. Her research suggests that roughly 40% of our happiness comes from intentional activity, the choices we make and the way we engage with daily life, while only about 10% comes from life circumstances, the very things most people spend the most energy chasing. The other 50% is a genetic set point. In other words, the travel matters far more than the destination, and the science backs that up.
Think about the people you know who seem genuinely at ease with themselves. Chances are they’re not the ones who have everything figured out. They’re the ones who are curious about what’s in front of them, who find something worth paying attention to in the middle of an unremarkable day. They’re not waiting. They’re already moving.
Stop treating your current circumstances as a temporary inconvenience on the way to the real thing. The commute, the half-finished project, the slow Tuesday afternoon. These aren’t obstacles between you and your life. They are your life. The question is whether you’re present for them.
A few concrete ways to put this into practice:
Goodman spent 33 years in a job that is full of setbacks, compromises and slow progress. If he had been waiting for politics to deliver a satisfying conclusion before allowing himself to find meaning in the work, he would have been miserable for three decades.
The destination will keep moving. What stays constant is the road under your feet right now, and whether you’re paying attention to it.
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