How to Chop an Onion Without Crying and Other Life Lessons

I was sitting in a friend’s kitchen the other night at some holiday thing with other friends while the main friend cooked something for us that required onions. We were all talking over each other per usual as she started chopping away while wiping tears from her cheeks.

Everybody jumped in with all kinds of stupid advice. Wear goggles. Light a candle. Slice the onions under water. (What?)

Of course, it was all nonsense.

In a rare moment of silence, sipping whatever was in my glass, I recalled that I had not shed a tear for an onion in years.

Because there is only one surefire hack to prevent that.

It’s easy — just get your heart broken a few times. Depending on the quality of the heartbreak, it won’t take many.

Most people don’t need help with this but may not realize the benefits they have already accrued. Young persons should be warned it will happen even while you’re just standing around waiting for your life to start. But if you can’t wait, there are some simple and reliable ways to get your heart broken:

1. Love the wrong person. This one is so obvious it should need no further explanation. But if it hasn’t already happened to you, you’re not trying hard enough. Think of all the onions in your future — do you want them to win by making you cry? Of course not. Also, it’s OK to love the wrong person, once. But try to notice when you do or it will just keep happening and you’ll never stop crying over onions, or maybe even beets, and that’s just embarrassing.

2. Love the right person. Less obvious, so worth revisiting. One of two things will happen: they will do something that hurts you or something will happen to them that hurts you because you love them, and their pain is your pain. Unless it’s not. Meaning, if you decide not to feel it. In the first case, you don’t have a choice. Bam: You’re hurt. In the second case, you choose whether or not to let yourself get hurt. You’re supposed to, it’s in the love contract, and you knew that. But we’ve all seen normal people ruin the lives of everyone around them when they decided to break that contract and not take the pain, inevitably creating more for everyone else. Weirdly, sometimes taking the pain means you stay and sometimes it means you go. But if you take it, you won’t ever cry over onions again.

3. Love an animal. Again, you’re in that contract. They love you, maybe, but you love them no matter what otherwise what are you even doing here? Same goes for children by the way, and they don’t even have to be yours. If you do your job, you won’t have any tears left for any damn onion. And don’t even think about what happens when you do everything right and it all goes wrong anyway. There won’t be an onion in the world that will make you cry. Again, true for animals and kids.

4. Love something you will lose. A childhood toy, a friend, a parent, your home. It’s a weird minefield because when you step on one of these mines it might not explode right away. You can walk around for a long time with that loss and think nothing changed, like that mine was a dud. And then you can’t find your car keys and it’s the apocalypse. Or maybe you can’t find your car, or can’t remember how to drive for a while. That happens too. Anyway, after a few apocalypses (apocali?) onions will no longer be a problem.

5. Live in the past. It’s a nice place to visit, maybe, or maybe it was dreadful, but you’re irritating everyone around you by staying there, if there’s anyone left. And you know who you’re really irritating? The future. You don’t want to do that. The future can surprise you (see what I did there?) with its powers of generosity, but it will not tolerate neglect. Do that and you won’t be safe from any root vegetable anywhere.

6. Live in the future. See above and switch it around; same goes. There are easier ways to break your heart (see 1 through 4).

It’s just that simple. By following any one or a combination of these steps you’ll never have to fear the chopping of onions ever again. And what better time than now to start, when we can ill afford to waste any of our tears.

Or you could try goggles. You just can’t ever take them off.

Katrina Herringbottom is an award-winning food writer.