Only the young can love, because the imbecility of youth is the only spectrum of love.
Serious Men“Only the young can love, because the imbecility of youth is the only spectrum of love.” is Arvind Acharya’s formulation of a sudden inward recognition: although his body is old, he feels like a young man accepting a woman’s affection. The sentence makes youth less a matter of age than a condition of loving, set against the dignity and restraint others expect of him.
Context and Meaning
As Arvind Acharya walks alone through a corridor, he considers the difference between his aging body and his inner sense of himself. The aches and weakness belong to the body he carries; they do not, in that moment, define what he feels. He imagines an old man as a young man in a body that would look undignified attempting the actions of the young, while recognizing that other people expect age to bring elegance and sanity. Love briefly releases him from that imposed identity: he feels like “just another young man.”
Image and Recurrence
The expression turns that feeling into a claim about love itself. Its word “imbecility” gives youth an irrational, unguarded quality, while “spectrum” makes love sound like a category of perception rather than a privilege reserved for a particular age. Arvind Acharya sharpens the thought with a comparison to light: just as a wavelength of 700 nanometres is always red, he concludes that “everyone who is in love is young.” The scientific precision of the comparison lends the thought a crisp form, even as its conclusion is emotional rather than empirical.
