September 12, 2002 | 4:03 PM

I just read this very well written piece about U.S. foreign policy.

And although it was an excellent take on Imperialism and American materialism�s terrorist like effect on the rest of the world, it really got me to think more about a tangential issue, one that is far more personal, and which consistently troubles me.

Sometimes when I objectively take a step back from myself, I am really appalled.

I make an extremely comfortable living. I own a lot of nice things. My life is easy. I don�t (or at least I try hard not to) exploit other people, and I have worked hard to get where I am. But I am so lucky. And it bothers me.

I grew up lucky. I went to one of the best high schools in the United States, and a good college. I lived in a nice suburban neighborhood sans crime. I knew I had a lot more than other people and my politics were always liberal, but my beliefs existed in a vacuum. I really didn�t understand how privileged I was. It was just my life and I accepted it.

When I was nineteen and my universe turned upside down and I was homeless, I found myself looking from the outside in at that life, and at all my friends who continued to live it. And I was so angry�yes, a little because I envied their level of comfort, but mostly at the way our disparities in wealth drove a wall between us. All of a sudden I wasn�t one of them. Not that they disowned me or didn�t like me because I was suddenly without home and wore the same clothes day in and out. It was more subtle than that. I just wasn�t one of them anymore. I was a charity case. And people saw me differently.

It dawned on me over a long period of time�long after I had a home and really was able to mull over everything that happened to me� that if this homelessness and destitution had been elongated back into my childhood, back to my birth, so that I could never remember what it felt like to have such an easy, well educated existence with access to a great deal of wealth and power (in middle class terms) that wall would have always been there. I never would have had the opportunities I'd had. And I most likely would not have developed the character and motivation to overcome that.

It was at this point that I changed from mouthing the same middle class line of bullshit that all nice white East Coast left leaning people "believe in� to being actually politically radicalized.

Because ladies and gentlemen. It absolutely positively could have been you or me or anyone of us that could have grown up homeless or addicted to crack or destitute or dying of starvation, and statistically, we most likely never would have risen above that level. We wouldn�t have pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps because we wouldn�t have even had boots, for fuck�s sake.

And this haunts me and scared the shit out of me. Because it is absolutely wrong wrong wrong for the world to be this way. And it is wrong I should know it�s wrong and still be buying into it by not following thorough on my beliefs.

I have been absolutely suckered into materialism. My relationship with the dollar is not as sleazy or selfish as many others, but that�s irrelevant. It�s disgusting that I spent twenty dollars on wine glasses when there are people dying of thirst in third world countries. It�s gross that I can throw away money on beer and records when some children don�t even have breakfast.

I�ll find myself saying things like,

I�m broke. That fucking sucks. I can�t afford the six pack of beer that I want. Oh poor me.

And the thing is I am not broke. I am FINE. I have a home. I have food. I am safe. Even when I was without shelter and shit outta luck subsisting on potato chips and water I never really knew what true poverty was like.

And I probably never will.

I�m not a communist by any means. But something has to be done. It has to. And I don�t know how but I have to start with me. Even if I took a small portion of my paycheck each week and did something that would really benefit someone else. And more important, if I spent time, actively spent time doing things that made a difference to other people. If I took the talents I have and put them to use to help make the world a better place.

I don�t know. This all just bothers me a lot.