Green with Envy

Green is one of my all-time favorite colors. I love green—all shades of it! So I guess it figures that God would use my love for green to teach me some serious lessons.

Green is the color of balance and harmony. From a color psychology perspective, it is the great balancer of the heart and the emotions, creating equilibrium between the head and the heart.

From a meaning of colors perspective, green is also the color of growth, the color of spring, of renewal and rebirth. It renews and restores depleted energy. It is the sanctuary away from the stresses of modern living, restoring us back to a sense of wellbeing. This is why there is so much of this relaxing color on the earth, and why we need to keep it that way.

Green is an emotionally positive color, giving us the ability to love and nurture ourselves and others unconditionally. A natural peacemaker, it must avoid the tendency to become a martyr.

I’m not sure which author first used the color green as a symbol for envy in literature. I’m going with Shakespeare. But I can tell you that the green-eyed monster was at the root of many struggles in my psychological walk throughout my teenage years.

The way I see it, there are two ways that envy affects a person’s life: you are either the target of someone’s envy or you are the very embodiment of envy yourself. For me, being the target is the worst! All of my psychological life, I’ve desired to be the person that God asks of me. I strive to exhibit SUBUD-like qualities in my character, in my personality, in my relationships, and in my walk with God. Even as a copywriter with wild imaginations and fantasies, I wanted to have integrity in my friendships, my goal-setting, and in taking care of the physical appearance that God gave me.©1 October 2015