Laying facedown on the carpeted floor of my roommate’s bedroom, I closed my eyes and listened to her strum the strings of a new mandolin. Lyrics of a song she felt inspired to begin writing yesterday poured from her unique and angelic voice. The texture, the tone, the flow, the words all molded together to formulate a story about young love and its effects. A song about the willingness to be vulnerable, to move forward in faith and excitement.

Then the chorus came. The tone changed, the emotions shifted. The song began to reveal what can happen if you move forward in faith and it doesn’t go as planned. As she wove the words together she arrived at a little five letter word that’s been re-appearing in different places in my life: JADED.

What exactly does it mean to be jaded?

Jaded: The end result of having a steady flow of negative experiences, disappointment, and unfulfillment fed into a person where they get to the point where their anger circuits just sort of burnout and they accept disillusionment. [Torsha Karmakar]

Becoming jaded is not exclusive to young love. This state of being has the ability to spread its tentacles far and wide to consume every aspect of our lives. Jadedness comes first from a place engulfed by complacency. You go through the same ol’ thing time and time again. What was once exciting and new, has now morphed into something dull. We grow tired, bored, and restless. Before long you might even become resentful, uninterested, and eventually cynical.

So often it all starts with something we actually quite like – take for instance, young love. At first everything is awesome because it’s new and you’re constantly learning about one another and experiencing new things together. Over time, though, it all can become rather routine. The reality of the situation reveals its face and you are forced to make a decision. Perhaps you weren’t meant to be together and it’s time to part ways. But you’re a changed person. It’s too late, you already made yourself vulnerable and revealed yourself in a way you sort of wish you could take back. Why? Because then maybe the hurt wouldn’t be the same.

So, instead, what you do is take all of that vulnerability, all of those memories and stow them away. You put up a wall and you become “stronger” (at least that’s what you tell yourself). When, in reality, if you don’t deal with what you’re going through, you become jaded instead of stronger. J-A-D-E-D. Cynical. In my opinion, you slip into a bit of denial. You conjure feelings of resentment or regret and you start the blame game. Things begin to get painted in a negative light. So what you do is vow never to make the same mistakes again — you’ll never go down that same road again.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great thing to learn from our past and decipher what’s best for us. However, it’s also important for us to deal with our emotions and circumstances. If we bury those feelings, we are only compounding the problem for the future. Making ourselves vulnerable is scary, but it’s a good place to be in order to mold ourselves into something better.

In this life, we can easily become jaded by so many things: relationships, jobs, circumstances. It’s a normal reaction to want to close yourself off from something that has burned you in the past. But how can we experience the fullness of anything in this life if we close part of ourselves off from receiving it in the future? If we’re building a wall and guarding ourselves from something, how are we going to be able to receive what our hearts truly desire?

Jaded or recreated? One is of death and the other is of life. The choice is yours to make.