Sex, love, death, and God.

It’s been said that these themes are at the center of all artistic expression.

There are other things, I suppose. Absurdity, irony, beauty, injustice, isolation … probably many other things if we ponder over it long enough.

These four, though, cover a lot of ground, don’t they?

We (most of us) want intimate physical contact with another. Some want it more, some less. Some lose interest early on; some never stop desiring. Undeniably, sex plays a powerful role in most of our lives in one way or another. It is, after all, how we got here in the first place. And it is, arguably, the most pleasant sensory experience available to humans.

We want to love and be loved. Countless songs and movies are about love, found and lost. Like a tooth, love is bound to cause pain both in its arrival and departure. Love hurts. We long for it—right up until it feels like it’s killing us from the inside out.

We obsess about death, and fear it above all else. It’s the end of hopes and dreams. The end of everything. Or is it? Which brings us to God.

We long for a transcendent experience which many think of as a connection to God, or the sacred, or “something larger than ourselves.” Maybe it’s found in religion, or nature, or deep meditation. Call it what you like. Many of us are sincerely searching for it.

Little surprise, then, that these four themes show up in film, theater, literature, music, painting, sculpture … you name it.

What is a piece of art, in any form, that moves you powerfully? Is it primarily about one of these themes? Can you think of one that doesn’t seem to be fundamentally about any of these four themes? What do you think it is about?