Absolutely by Patrick Kieffer

Lists are an exercise in exclusion more than selection.

1. Choosing a favorite will strengthen your choice but erode that which is chosen; there is a difference.
2. There is no normal form for the comparative better or the superlative best the way there is for, say, greater and greatest, and that’s a good thing. 

Complexity is the enemy of the absolute, which is both the preferred rhetorical device of our time and a reaction to the complexity of our time. 

3. The ideal list contains no more than three items.
4. Longer lists are better.

Psychological studies consistently show people feel a greater fondness for certain numbers, suggesting something in the number itself has universal appeal (or repulsion). 7, for one. 

No one will write a when the can be gotten away with.

I will never accept that the absolutist stance cannot be an agent of progress. 

5. I love the phrase “never once” but I am weary of “always.”
6. All lists feel good, but our own lists feel better than others’.
7. The perfect list is only as long as it needs to be.

There is nothing so dangerous as absolutism. 

Patrick Kieffer is a teacher and writer working out of New York. He believes stories and dogs are the oldest and most sacred of human companions.