Keith, Carrie, WalMart, & the World

Carrie Underwood and Keith Urban played a free concert last night for the Wal-Mart Shareholders' annual event. They were pretty awesome. I had no idea how good of musicians they were. The words "grind" and "axe" totally apply to Keith even though he's country! As I was sitting there before Carrie started, I couldn't help but think about how rich America is. I say that in a good and bad way. It's really unbelievable that a single company has enough money to throw a free concert w/ two of the country's biggest artists in a multi-million dollar stadium...and it was just one night of what Wal-Mart does. People in the world are dying from starvation (and other things, but Wal-Mart carries food, so I thought I'd mention starvation in particular), and we're being entertained for free!

Now, I fully realize that if we all kept our jobs and lived very frugally, we could all save more ppl's lives than we do. There will always be more that we can do. (And for anyone with a conscience, there will always be a struggle between deciding whether to get what we want in the face of the world's struggles.) And I know that companies have to keep running, and in order to do that they must keep their shareholders happy. And I also know that Wal-Mart gives a lot. So, I'm not necessarily saying anyone should be doing anything differently. I'm not in the position to do that (not that I wouldn't like the job that got to tell people what they should be doing differently). But I think we should evaluate our own lives and decide what we want to live for (or what we want to live without so that someone else can live). We're an incredibly rich country even during a recession...we're incredibly lucky/blessed, and we're incredibly spoiled.

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