There aren't many words, especially adjectives, with as many meanings as "green". They all point to the color, of course, but the color means so much: young, inexperienced, alive, envious.
What if they all point to the same thing? I think, perhaps, they do, at least in my own youthful understanding of things. Well, young at least, if not youthful.
For me it just makes sense; to be young is to be quite alive, both in your distance from "natural" death and the energy that goes with it, but it's also to be inexperienced, and I think it is often to be envious because there are still so many things left in the world to experience, to do, to see, to feel, to be. Envy, I think, is the fallen state of adventurous. I suppose it's possible to be some of them but not all, or one of them and not the rest. But it is, at least, to be less "green." Right now, I'd say I'm pretty green, and not just because it's St. Patrick's Day.
I don't know that there is much real importance to a simple accounting and conflation of all the possible meanings of green, but I do like how so much of it comes straight from creation. Green literally means both alive and unripe in the same organisms and, at least in English, often in the same people.
I'm definitely far from "ripe," and even if that means inexperienced to a fault, at least it still means I'm very alive.
-Zack
"Our love was on the wing, we had dreams and songs to sing"
-The Fields of Athenry
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