Resumen: Many concepts and expressions link education with love, the uses of the will or manners of loving. In these pages, we will concentrate on some of the aspects, wich come together: teaching and learning are only possible through love. Education may be defined as helping to love, to love learning. Within this framework, contemplation is an act that may lead to the recovery of the will, thus permitting the reason to act in its full measure by integrating feeling with loving, which is taxing to accomplish, particularly in our times. The joy of learning is a key means of finding the correct pathway; a pathway that follows tracks leading to growth, which implies carrying out formative learning so that human learning can be achieved. The text follows this outline: firstly, a reflection on the aim of human life and education, which will give rise to key concepts such as desire, contemplation, love, will, and knowledge. Then we give more specific consideration to the relationship between learning and contemplating, the necessary operative concurrence of intelligence and will for learning, which indicates the importance of imagination and memory. It is here that joy appears, associated with hopeful anticipation of promising future prospects. And it concludes by showing how learning is materialized in the formation of good operative habits. One question remains as a response to the reading of this text: what effect would authentic pedagogical renovation have today?