Have you seen the AT&T commercial with the world-traveling Shoe Guy?

He uses his phone (and the killer AT&T worldwide connection) to do business, which for him is selling shoes and giving shoes away. For every pair of shoes his company sells, his company donates a pair to children in need.

Call me a cynic (I'm in marketing--being suspicious of advertising comes with the territory), but I thought AT&T made up this guy and his shoe company. I did give them props for tapping into the zeitgeist with their good-hearted, world-traveling Shoe Guy.

Turns out, though, the scruffy, good-looking Shoe Guy is for real.

His name is Blake Mycoskie and his shoe company is called TOMS (which, I learned, stands for "Tomorrow"). Blake is a world traveler (he had been a contestant on The Amazing Race at one point) who, on his journeys, discovered kids need shoes. So he founded his shoe company on the principle that for every pair they sell, they give a pair away to kids in need.

How cool is that?

How would my life look if I lived as generously as the Shoe Guy? If for everything I get, for everthing that's "mine," I gave in like kind? That giving--of my money, my time, my resources--wasn't a percentage of my life, but more of a one-to-one ratio?

How cool would that be?

The Shoe Guy gives me something to think about. He's living out the idea that it is more blessed to give than receive. Cool.