Talking about desire in relation to spiritual life could arouse discomfort, probably believing that we are dealing with its most insidious enemy: in fact, if desires were allowed free rein, what could happen? Where would it end? Letting go of desires could lead to an unbridled life, prey to impulses, contrary to chosen values. It is perhaps also for these reasons that desire has been looked at with suspicion, interpreting the last two commandments along the lines of: "do not desire and you will have a peaceful life".

The desire could also recall the strongest suffering received in life, an unrequited affection, a betrayed friendship, a beautiful misunderstood gesture... a series of situations in which self-opening and the expression of what one had most dear has led to being hit in the heart with the consequences that can be imagined: hence again the conclusion that a life without desires is all in all more peaceful, without too many shocks, unexpected events and therefore ultimately more orderly and manageable.

Many spiritual proposals actually try to implement this state of peace of mind: let's think of Buddhism which aims for total imperturbability by extinguishing desire, considered as the root of suffering and evil. Think, again, of the cultural project that arose in Europe in the aftermath of the scientific revolution, which would like to place everything under the criterion of reason, the only one capable of giving a stable direction to existence, guaranteed by the exercise of technical rationality and scientific, leaving the rest to the field of the debatable, about which everything and the opposite of everything can be said.

Yet, curiously, since the Enlightenment onwards, European man has become less and less reasonable: in fact, if desires are conceived as adversaries in conflict with reason, who will win? Is it really true that you can eliminate desires and emotions from life?

Desire cannot be so easily erased; without it, even the will remains weakened, as can be seen every time desire and will are in conflict with each other: in this case, how long can the will resist? And at what price can it do so? The psychologist R. May observes in this regard: «Desire brings warmth, content, imagination, childish play, freshness and richness to the will. Will gives self-direction, maturity of desire. The will protects the desire, allowing it to continue without taking excessive risks. If you have only will without desire, you have the sterile, neo-puritanical Victorian man. If you only have desire without will, you have the forced, captive, infantile person, an adult who remains a child." 

Desires and affections constitute the basic element of psychic, intellectual and spiritual life, they are the source of all activity; they seem at first sight to constitute a chaotic and complicated whole in the eyes of formal rationality, and yet they refer to fundamental and necessary realities that give flavor to life, because they make it interesting, "tasty". St. Thomas acutely associates desire with the act of seeing itself, which is in itself a selective operation, which focuses on what captures the heart: "Where there is love, there the eye rests."

Desire also occupies a fundamental place in biblical revelation itself, unlike other religious traditions, to the point of constituting a specific aspect of the relationship with God: «The Bible is full of the turmoil and conflict of all forms of desire. Of course, it is far from approving them all, but in this way they take on all their strength and give all its value to the existence of man" (Galopin-Guillet). You cannot love others if you do not love yourself, welcoming the heritage of your own affection.

On the other hand, these very fears indicate the power and role that desire plays in life. It is truly capable of igniting the whole being, of giving strength, courage and hope in the face of difficulties, of giving flavor and color to actions. Often precisely the lack of desire constitutes the watershed between a successful, coherent and lasting project and the thousand ambitions and theoretical "good intentions" with which, as they say, hell is paved: what leaves them at the pure sketch stage is precisely the lack of real desire to carry them forward. The same value becomes beautiful and easily achievable when it is attractive; even from a moral point of view, great changes can be implemented when they are seen as attractive for the subject: «Good behavior is valid to the extent that it is the fruit of the desire for goodness. More than being good, it is important to have the desire to become good" (Manenti).

Desire, in fact, allows us to implement the only type of transformation that is lasting in life, that is, to "change in the ability to change": this allows us to bring order back to disorder. In this case, a radical restructuring of oneself is carried out, laying the foundations for accomplishing what one wants. Ignatius calls it "putting order in one's life".