He’s made millions. He’s retired. He could slow down.

But Ed Hajim has a story to tell and some advice to pass along.

Thus, the 1958 University of Rochester graduate and former chairman of that school’s board of trustees is writing books.

His first, a memoir titled "On the Road Less Travelled: An Unlikely Journey from the Orphanage to the Boardroom," was published in 2021.

In that work, Hajim revealed the circumstances of his own challenging childhood and his journey to a successful career on Wall Street.

In the recently published “The Island of the Four Ps: A Modern Fable About Preparing for your Future,” Hajim, 86, passes along some of the lessons he has taken from his life and his career in the financial industry.

He believes a fable works best to engage the reader. “It’s a softer, but more compelling way to make a point,” Hajim said in a Zoom interview. He noted the effectiveness of other fables, including Dr. Spencer Johnson’s  “Who Moved My Cheese? An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life.”

In Hajim’s fable, a young man named Marketus leaves home for the first time, sailing off to the Island of the Four Ps.

The Ps are passions, principles, partners and plans. Each of them is represented by a village on the island.

Guided by a mentor named Archimedes, Marketus goes from village to village. Along the way, they talk about the role that passions, principles, partners and plans have, and will have, in his life.

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It’s a lot for the young man to take in, especially because Archimedes is one of those teachers who, rather than provide the answers, encourages his pupil to think for himself.

In that respect, he’s like Hajim, who hopes his book encourages people to have “conversations with themselves,” to sit down and examine their lives, what they have been, what they will be.

The trickiest of his four Ps may be planning, as so many disruptions — new technologies, let alone pandemics — lie in wait. The best strategy, Archimedes suggests, is to plan, but also to be prepared to change plans when setbacks occur.

To him, setbacks are opportunities. “Never be a victim,” he says, “use that energy to move ahead.”

The life of Ed Hajim

In the afterward of “The Island of the Four Ps,” Hajim steps away from his fable and writes briefly about his own life.

He makes it clear that he did not have a childhood that leant itself to planning. “Until I was eighteen, my life felt like a game of dice that was rigged against me,” he writes.

The short version of that rigged life is that his father kidnapped him from his mother when he was 3. Later, Hajim was placed in foster care and then into orphanages.

Counterintuitively, the only way for him to achieve a semblance of control was to plan, to imagine what it would be like if he were in charge of his life.

“Using a pencil and a pad — the iPad of my youth — I started writing down both my goals and problems I wanted to overcome,” Hajim writes, “and I’ve continued doing that throughout my life.”

In 2008, the 50^th anniversary of his graduation, Hajim gave $30 million to the University of Rochester. (Full disclosure: I have taught journalism courses there for years.) He says that he is now focusing his life on gratitude. He’s also planning a third book, doing his part to improve the conversations we have with ourselves.

Remarkable Rochesterians

As suggested by Ken Sanzotta of Webster, let’s add the name of this actress to the list of Remarkable Rochesterians, which can be found at: https://data.democratandchronicle.com/remarkable-rochesterians/.

Mary LaRoche (1920-1996): An actress in radio plays by the time she was 10, she performed in Rochester community theater as a teenager and young woman and took voice and piano lessons at the Eastman School of Music. Moving to New York, she appeared on Broadway in several musicals and then went on to supporting roles in a number of movies, including “Gidget” and “Bye Bye Birdie.” She was also a regular on television, appearing in “The Twilight Zone,” “Perry Mason,” and “Gunsmoke,” among other programs. She also toured in Australia and New Zeeland for two years, playing the lead part of Nellie Forbush. After retiring in 1977, she lived in Rochester.

From his home in Geneseo, Livingston County, retired senior editor Jim Memmott, writes Remarkable Rochester, who we were, who we are. He can be reached at jmemmott@gannett.com or write Box 274, Geneseo, NY 14454.

This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Wealthy UR grad Ed Hajim has advice for you in the Island of 4 Ps