1 / Unlikely you’ll find any of them in a list, particularly not this one, but it’s possible. Readers are neither encouraged nor discouraged to continue.

2 / The first step is to decide what you truly need from what you merely think you need. To do this, you must discern between need and want. We don’t always need what we want nor want what we need.

3 / Unlikely you’ll find anything you need in an advertisement, so why do you keep looking at them?

4 / You don’t want to seem a “know it all” type. These know it all types are generally boring, and usually know only one aspect of the thing in question.

5 / Many lists only confirm what we knew to be true to begin with. Once we know something, we may discard it and draw another question.

6 / Everything they say is not good for you, it’s not, and you already knew it.

7 / At the same time, when you hear something is “ok in moderation,” recall William Blake’s line, “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.” This should require no further explanation, except to question whether you really want to live in a palace, where evenings can grow quite lonely.

8 / Most lists are like ads, designed to persuade. What do you think this list is trying to sell you?

9 / If you use about 20 gallons of water every time you take a shower, and you shower daily, but you divert the water to gardening, you could grow 20 vegetable gardens. If you can’t divert the shower water, but you skip one shower a week, you can grow one garden without using any extra water.

10 / This need to know item intentionally left blank.

First published at The Coming of the Toads. Photograph by Matthew Juzenas