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When cutting an onion, it is best to first cut it in half lengthways.
But trecherous waters lie ahead! You do not yet have a flat side to your onion, so cut slowly and firmly, with the non-onion-cutting hand steadying the onion in a claw grip, fingers tucked away from the blade. Ensure your blade is sharp. Cutting with a dull blade requires excess force, increasing the likelihood of your hand slipping and cutting a non-onion object. At best: another vegetable - the unifromity of your vegetables have been ruined, and they will cook unevenly leading to sad and miserable mush in the unfortunate victims. At worse: your fingers - widespread panic has now ensued and first aid is likely nessesary. Honestly you really should have been more careful, I did tell you so.
Now you have your happy, strucutrally stable onion with a nice, flat side - and hopefully all your fingers - you can remove the first few outer layers of the skin of your onion. There are lots of different types of onions so there is no colour-coded cheat sheet here, but the skin can be identified as much thinner and dryer than all other layers. It will likely crumble under a small amount of force, similar to a dry, dead leaf. The skin can be composted, I think. But maybe that is something I should come back to, as I am not actually too sure. But you can also use it to make vegetable stock, so consider all your options before you throw it away.
At this point, you should cut off the ends. The non-believers will tell you to wait until the very end, so you don’t cry, but those who avoid the inevitable do not prevent it - only risk making the sting of the onion more potent the next time, as they are unused to the sensation. You can, should you be dumb enough to choose to do so, tape a sinking ship with Sellotape and then watch as your questionable solution stops the water pouring in for a second or two. But as you lounge around, happily content with your subpar problem solving skills, water floods in and sinks your ship. Your death is made twice as miserable by the fact that you were not expecting it, you can only watch helplessly as all that exists around you is sucked into the ocean, and you realise that is soon the fate you will also come to and that there is nothing that you can do about it. Had you seen the damage and realised there was nothing you could do in the very short time frame between water leaking into your boat and your boat sinking, you would have jumped off the ship and swam away. You still would have drowned, probably - but you might have felt slightly less helpless this time around.
But no judgment will be passed on your intellectual ability nor on your decision making skills, ultimately it is your own choice to make, and support cannot be offered. This is your onion after all, isn’t it?
You are now tasked with dicing the onion into the smaller, more edible pieces that you intend to cook with. Or should you fall into the questionable demographic of people who lack enough humanity to enjoy the taste and texture of raw onion, then you get to skip cooking them and enjoy them how you please. Though be warned, your onion preferences are enough to make a grown man cry. Please at least consider pickling.
Luckily for you, the choice of how to dice your onion is less of a reflection of your personal character and problem-solving skills, and more of a choice based on what dish you require. Unluckily for you, you must learn to do this step by yourself.
As you begin to research a way to dice your onion to fit your desired dish, you will quickly come to realise there is no one way to cut an onion. You will be faced with thousands of tips, tricks and helpful infographics – yet all of them may tell you something different. You may sigh, maybe make the fatal mistake of rubbing your eyes, before simply choosing one and getting on with it – ultimately you have no other choice. After all, it was you who got yourself into this mess. To cut an onion you must learn for yourself, and from there adapt. But who knows, maybe one day you can teach someone how you cut an onion, and then you will get to watch in amusement as they make all the same mistakes that you once did – it’s the circle of life, after all.