Someone liked my use of the term “current self” a couple of weeks ago.  I meant that sometimes our inner lives have such sea changes (another favorite phrase) that our feelings and actions would hardly be recognizable by the 2002 or 2010 versions of ourselves.   I like “current” in the sense of “up-to-date,” but “current” is not static.  It is running, shifting.  It is a current event, an ocean current, related to “courier” and “courant,” always moving and chasing and striving.  Au courant= trendy.  Hartford Courant= a newspaper with a beautiful name in a city I know nothing about.

My gut feeling is that “courage” and “courant” are not etymologically related, that the former  is related to the cord- and card- words having to do with the heart, but I’m not sure.