Gordon Murray passed away on January 15, 2011, just days before his book on investing was due to come out in hardcover. The paperback version sold out in the fall of 2010. He had glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer. He was only 60 years old. But he left a legacy of which every cancer patient can be proud.
So often, cancer patients often feel defeated by their disease. Life isn’t fair, and cancer patients understand this more than most people. Cancer takes away so much of what matters, and then cancer treatment often takes almost all of the rest. But Gordon Murray wasn’t willing to accept this fate. He wanted his life to count for something. He wanted all those years he spent learning his trade to have meaning. He wanted to leave the world a better place than what it was and he wanted investors to avoid the pitfalls of a volatile market. He chose to create a legacy in spite of the cancer. Or was it the cancer that pushed him to create it?
What does Gordon Murray want the world to know? Most people invest haphazardly, taking far too many risks on unknowns — hot stocks and bonds without solid histories of performing, and they end up buying and selling at the wrong times. He believed that investors benefit from taking a simpler, more regimented approach. For decades, Gordon Murray had embraced an aggressive trading philosophy on Wall Street, but toward the end of his life, he chose a different approach for his own portfolio. Why is this important? Because he wanted to take care of his family in the best way he could, protect the assets he had spent decades accumulating, and how he made his investment decisions changed as a result.
When brain cancer first came to him in 2008, he understood his time might be short. A new tumor in 2010 brought home the reality of his terminal illness. He chose to use the time he had to share what he had learned about investing through the years, and he wanted people to know he had evolved his financial philosophy. He wanted people to understand that in an age of glitz and glamor, where what is popular and pretty seems like instant success and people rush to get a piece of the action. He believed there was a better way, and before he died, he wanted people to what it was.
But maybe even more important than the book, “The Investment Answer”, was the fact that writing it gave him purpose and mission. Every cancer patient needs to believe that his or her life still has meaning. Whether you paint, dig ditches, catch bad guys, write, build bridges, teach, run a business, solve diplomatic crises, or slay dragons, you need to believe that your life matters to someone. In believing that, you have the impetus to move forward, to focus on what is important, to make choices and decisions about what you want your legacy to be. Even if you live another twenty years or more, just getting pointed in that direction can be a transforming experience. All of us should “live like you are dying”. That way, when our time finally comes, and it will for all of us, we will have left a legacy of which we can be proud.
When you choose to do this, you get rid of the regrets and the anger. You focus on the positive and you move ahead, past the limitations of the cancer and its debilitating effects. You say, “This is what I want to do and cancer isn’t going to steal that from me.” When you succeed in reaching your goals, that’s a victory.