Perhaps I’ve been consuming too many British period pieces, but these words took up residence in my mind this week:
Au courant: Fully informed or familiar; fashionable, stylish.
But literally: In the current.A la mode: Fashionable or stylish—or topped with ice cream!
Literally: According to the fashion
According to the fashion…or something else entirely .
I was especially intrigued by the double meaning of current.
The Old Story
This week, I stepped on the scale and saw that I’d gained a few pounds.
And just like that, an old story rushed in.
I don’t weigh myself very often—I can easily become obsessed with my weight, as I was in college when I studied modern dance.
Weight isn’t something I talk about. It makes me feel vulnerable. Foolish.
As a spiritual person, I should be beyond all of this.
But the story knows nothing about that should. It’s too busy with itself.
In that old loop, it’s simple:
This is bad.
I’m a failure.
No one will love me if I’m fat.
I know this isn’t true.
It doesn’t take into account that I’d lost a lot of weight quickly when I was sick last year.
Or that gaining weight might actually be healthy.
Or that I’m gaining strength and muscle as I exercise more.
Or that it might not mean anything at all.
It might not matter.
Or that my body’s wisdom can be trusted.
No.
In that moment, I am simply…too much.
Not About Weight
But this isn’t about weight.
It isn’t even about health.
It’s about expectations I’ve taken on from the outside—about what is acceptable, what is desirable, what is allowed.
Last week I wrote about not-enoughness.
This week, I’m seeing the other side:
Too much.
I’m curious:
Do you ever have moments like this—where something small opens the door to an old, familiar story?
Where you find yourself feeling like you’re too much…even when part of you knows it isn’t true?
The Bigger Story
My story isn’t just personal.
It’s also cultural.
“Thinness itself, or constantly striving for thinness, becomes subconscious visual shorthand for society that a woman is doing her part in maintaining the (profoundly sexist) status quo.
As always, the only way to win this game is not to play.”
On some level, our culture benefits from instilling these stories in us.
This is about control.
And how easily we internalize it in our longing to fit in.
My Council of Elders
So I went to visit my council of elders
(If you missed last week’s post—they are a group of seven whiskey-swigging, smoking, poker-playing, cackling older women who arrived in the middle of a meditation.)
They don’t play this game.
I looked at them
—with their saggy skin, fat rolls, chin hairs, and underarm dingle-dangle—
completely at ease with themselves.
They laughed at the idea of control.
Then they formed a circle around me.
In the center, I became a little girl, curled in a ball.
They held me there.
Safe.
Loved.
My fierce, imperfect guardians.
Learning to See
I want to be one of them.
But old habits of thinking are strong. They’ve been part of me since I was quite small.
I’m beginning to see that it takes discipline to accept all of ourselves.
Not discipline as control or punishment—
But discipline as awareness and choice.
First, I have to notice when the old story arises.
Because until I do, I don’t have a choice.
Then, maybe, I can choose something different.
Not as another way to fix myself,
but as a way to meet my true self.
Staying in the Current
Maybe this is what it means to be au courant.
Not fashionable.
But willing to stay in the current of life rather than fighting it.
Stay awake, stay centered. Stay in the current—maybe even let it carry me instead of holding on to the illusion of control.
Even if it’s scary.
Even if I don’t know where it’s going.
Riding the current could even be fun!
Abraham Hicks says that life is difficult for many of us because we’re fighting the current instead of riding it.
That feels true. Even as I cling to the illusion of being in control.
Not easy.
Taking off the Armor
This week, I also came across these words from Pema Chodron, in Comfortable with Uncertainty:
I am awake, I will spend my life taking the armor off. Nobody else can take it off ….
And:
When we protect ourselves so we won’t feel pain, that protection becomes like armor, like armor that imprisons the softness of the heart.”
These stories we carry—about being too much or not enough—they are part of the armor.
We wear them so long that we forget they’re there.
Like tinted glasses, we no longer notice we’re not seeing ourselves or the world in our true colors
Recovering the Soft Creature of our Hearts
To get back to our soft hearts—
to our full selves—
this the work of a lifetime.
In this culture that tells us to hurry, to fix, to optimize…
to want the world, the whole world….and want it now.
(Like Veruca Salt in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.)
But maybe it doesn’t have to be like that.
Maybe it takes time.
Patience.
Rest.
To release our hearts from the armor we’ve forgotten we’re wearing.
A Different Way
What if we didn’t have to fight so hard?
What if we didn’t have to shrink ourselves
or fix ourselves
to earn our place?
What if we could let the current carry us—
even when it feels uncomfortable,
even when the weight of the armor pulls us down—
trusting that we know how to move,
trusting that the current
will carry us where we need to go?
With love and gratitude,
Susan
