A Breath of Fresh Air

There’s something in the air as we head into this new year. It feels kind of like that big breath you take in and let out (whew!) just before you come clean about something you’ve been tiptoeing around for a little too long. Like: OK. Here’s the deal . . .

Maybe it’s that we’ve come to the end of another decade — a decade during which a great many crises have converged, and the true costs of choosing to ignore them have become clearer.

A lot of us are seeing the cracks in our economy, our healthcare system, our food system, our culture. We’re noticing the chinks in our own “just-gotta-get-through-this” armor. We’re weary of the same old excuses for why things are just that way. We’re longing for something more satisfying, and we smell something better on the breeze.

To me, it smells refreshingly like honesty. Honesty about the real roots of our most pressing challenges and their interconnected nature. Honesty about the solutions that hold the most promise. Honesty about what we’re willing to do and change to make our dreams for a better future into a livable reality.

It’s with all that in mind that we assembled this “Change Your Life” issue of Experience Life magazine. And it’s in that spirit that we recently finished planning a kick-butt editorial calendar for 2011.

I’m happy to announce that our longstanding editorial promise (no six-pack-ab sensationalism, no bikini-body obsessions, no gimmicks, no hype) still stands. In fact, over the past decade, our commitment to telling it like it is has only grown stronger.

Admittedly, this makes us a freakish outlier on most newsstands (which is why finding us there can be tough — Whole Foods Market and Barnes & Noble are usually your best bets). But we don’t mind being different. And based on what we’re hearing from our fast-growing audience (currently pegged at 2.8 million people), we figure we gotta be doing something right.

So we’re forging onward — and dialing it up a notch. Our goal for 2011: to reach as many health-motivated people as we can with the most helpful, most BS-free, most life-transforming wisdom and practical know-how available.

Back in September, when we adopted our new mantra, “Being Healthy Is a Revolutionary Act,” I had already begun work on an essay with that same title, and I’d also begun toying with the idea of a manifesto — a little handbook of principles and too-rarely-spoken truths around which I saw this healthy revolution taking shape.

Initially, I don’t think I entirely understood what I was doing, or why. I just felt compelled. So I pondered, I researched, I ranted. I invited feedback from my team, from friends, and from healthy revolutionaries I admire. And over the course of a few months, something exciting started to emerge.

It was a powerful, passionate, brass-tacks conversation — one that’s still just gathering steam — about the fact that being healthy in an unhealthy culture is a bigger, more complex and far more confounding endeavor than it’s generally cut out to be. And that by connecting with and supporting each other, we can make it easier.

There are already millions of healthy revolutionaries out there. And there are millions more getting ready to join their ranks.

So . . . OK. Here’s the deal. You’ve got a role to play, if you’re willing. Check out the feature and accompanying manifesto, and if they strike a chord, visit RevolutionaryAct.com. From there, you can download and share (free!) anything you like with anyone you think would dig it. Then keep the conversation going — through Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Meetup or any of the other resources and communities you’ll find through the site.

If enough of us breathe life into this healthy revolution, who knows what will happen? We’ve got a whole new decade ahead of us. Anything is possible.

Here’s to a fresh and sparkling 2011!

Pilar Gerasimo is editor in chief for Experience Life.