I just got off the train a few days ago when I randomly began thinking why green was the colour that denoted jealousy or envy.

I mean, I know green is not the greatest colour, but it’s my mums favourite colour and I really wanted to know why it was used as a synonym or rather, the best descriptive colour for Jealousy.

So I went to do my research. I wanted to know who influenced society so bad that even till now, colours are still affiliated with certain feelings.

Yes, I got an answer. Green began to be associated with Envy since Shakespeare started writing. For some reason, his subjective reasoning had brought him to describe jealousy or envy in his books as green i.e “the green monster” or “green with envy”, and with the number of people reading Shakespeare in the world, I don’t think we have to think so far as to why it is now widely accepted that green is the colour for envy.

It reminds us of the power we have as writers. To influence a whole generation by a subjective thought in writing.

I honestly want to believe my thought process didn’t actually start here because the hour before, I was thinking about why envy and jealousy are actually things in life. Like why they even exist, pardon my innocent heart for forgetting the fact that we are in an evil world, but I still wondered why someone’s upgrade will bring grief and pain to another person.

No, this is not to say I’m not guilty or haven’t been guilty! As a matter of fact I struggled with jealousy for a good part of my life, my jealousy was rooted in something deeper and God tackled it from the root.

I was a competitive person by flesh, not be nature, so I tended to get jealous when I didn’t win and someone else did.

Until I realised that someone’s win, didn’t mean my loss, and someone’s loss, didn’t mean my win, It’s really just as easy as that.

There are a lot of things in our lives as Christians that we do that we don’t immediately see the graveness of, until God opens our eyes to it. Envy seems like were doing ourselves more harm than even God, but envy and jealousy speak greater volumes!

It tells a story of your inadequate god that does not have enough to go round and so you constantly feel a need to do better, or outweigh the other person or get somewhere before the next person, constantly thinking that ‘it will soon finish’.

This is what jealousy says subtly.

But you’re to busy to notice because you’re carried away with the next point of action to ‘do it better’.

I don’t know about you but my God is adequate, He is sufficient, He has more than enough to go round, and above all there’s even so much more, even when He’s done distributing to all His children.

If I honestly lived each day with this is mind, I don’t think it’ll ever cross my mind 2 times to look to the next lane and think that I’ve somehow been cheated and deserve more or feel pain that the person in the next lane isn’t at the same point as I am.

One of my best sayings is ‘Focus creates blindness’.

I think it should be our prayer everyday to be so focused on our lane to the point where were blind to that of others.

This is no license to be selfish! but to look to the next lane only when the next action from ourselves would be one borne from love and not the ugly ‘green’ thing.

On behalf of Shakespeare, I am truly sorry to all green lovers. I don’t think there was any reason why green should have been the colour for Envy and jealousy but, we’ll live!