A theologico-political treatise Book

I've been reacting to this book since I was 17 (so 20 years now). On first reading it, I felt liberation. All my fears and cares had been revealed as error, since the only good is truth, and truth cannot be taken away, only neglected. Over the years, this alternated with a second reaction -- if all the stuff of this world is of neither moment nor importance, why live? My anxiety gave way to a kind of numbness, a sense of life-as-marking-time. In responding to the theological problem that the existence of pain posed for Christians, C.S. Lewis remarked that God had two choices: give man a heart that could bleed, or a charcoal briquette for a heart. Life without suffering, and hoping, isn't really life.

My third, and relatively recent reaction to The Consolations was provided by W.S. Merwin, in his poem "To The Consolations of Philosophy". Written right after 9/11: "I know the design/ of the world is beyond/ our comprehension/ thank you/ but grief is selfish and in/ the present when/ the stars do not seem to move/ I was not listening". Admitting that a more philosophical attitude is on the whole better, but rejecting the idea that philosophy can or should draw anyone completely out of the (admittedly temporary) world.

Another twenty years, I am be able to decide what I really think.