Hustle Harder, Hustle Smarter by Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson

Author:Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2020-03-11T00:00:00+00:00

THE WRITING IS NEVER ON THE WALL

Back in the days of the Old Testament, there was a Babylonian king named Belshazzar. He led a decadent lifestyle, even by ancient standards. I’m talking about keeping a harem filled with beautiful women and throwing drunken orgies that would last for days.

One night he decided to really push the royal envelope. He usually held his parties in his palace, but on this night, he decided to host one in the city’s holiest temple. The king got so drunk that at the height of the party he started drinking wine out of sacred cups that had been brought to the temple from Jerusalem. They were only supposed to be handled by the temple’s priests, but Belshazzar was on a mission to prove that there wasn’t any taboo he wouldn’t break.

Almost immediately after he finished drinking from the cups, the king suddenly saw a disembodied hand writing the following phrase on the temple’s wall:

Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin

At first he probably thought he’d had too much wine, but when he took a closer look, he saw the words were really on the wall. That sobered him up quick. He called his wise men over to explain what the hell was going on, but they couldn’t understand what the words said either. Then he called over the Hebrew prophet Daniel, who was able to translate what the words meant: “God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end. You have been weighed . . . and found wanting.”

It was a serious warning, but Belshazzar wasn’t worried. He was the king of Babylon, after all. No Hebrew God was going to tell him what to do. So he kept the wine flowing and his party going. He should have listened, though. Fed up with the disrespect, that Hebrew God struck Belshazzar dead that very night and left his empire in ruins.

I share that story because it represents the origins of the phrase “the writing’s on the wall.” Back then, it was about a king who defied God. Today we use it to describe a moment where it should be obvious that a situation is about to take a turn for the worse.

In a business context, you might say that the writing was on the wall for BlackBerry once the iPhone came out. Or that the writing was on the wall for Blockbuster once everyone started ordering movies from Netflix.

Of course, in hindsight, it’s easy to look back at what happened to the BlackBerries and Blockbusters of the world and identify when their fortunes were about to take a turn for the worse. To actually identify when that turn is happening in real time, especially when it’s happening to you, is a much harder task.

That’s because the writing is never actually on the wall.

If that were the case, it would be easy to know when to shift up your business plan, start looking for a new job, or even get out of a bad relationship.

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