COMPLACENCY KILLS

Once upon a time there was an old woman who had died and found herself in hell. She complained to Satan that her assignment to the netherworld was a mistake.

Satan told her, "You've been a greedy, selfish woman all your life. Surely, this is where you belong."

The woman thought a long time, trying to recollect some shred of altruism in her life. After several minutes she exclaimed, "Aha! I did a good deed once! I gave an onion to a beggar."

Satan replied, "Oh, yes. That is right. You pulled an onion out of the ground in your yard and handed it (bulb, stalk, and all) to a beggar at the fence."

At that very moment, God's hand descended into hell, holding the onion out for the woman to grasp. Holding onto the onion with both hands, the woman found herself miraculously being pulled up and out of hell.

As she rose, to the woman's horror, dozens of people began to grasp at her legs and ankles, and as they were pulled up along with her, yet more people grasped onto the lower-most people's own legs and ankles, until it seemed that the bowels of hell clung like an endless chain from a single woman's body and the onion to which she clung.

Though there was great weight tethered to the onion, the connection remained secure and God's hand continued to lift eveyone up out of hell. Remarkably, the onion held; it did not fray.

More and more people who had previously been doomed for eternity found themselves slowly, miraculously, being raised from hell by way of the woman's firm grasp on the onion. There were soon thousands, and after several minutes millions of people hanging from the onion.

Yet the onion held fast.

Halfway to heaven, which is a long distance up from hell, the woman looked down at the vast human chain following her.

She was angry and resentful that these people -- who may have done even less good in their lives than herself -- should be so easily redeemed by virtue of simply clinging to her spindly old legs. She was also afraid, and so excaimed in a great shout, "If all of you grab on to me like this, the onion will surely break and I will not get to heaven!"

So, resolving not to  allow anyone to harm her chances for redemption, the woman began to kick and smash the people hanging from her legs and ankles and toes. One by one as she struck them they fell, with each loss of a handhold causing tens of thousands of people to plunge back into hell.

But with each kick -- though the physical load grew lighter -- the onion began to fray. And as the onion frayed, the woman, in her anger and haste, began to kick more ferociously still, thinking that it was the weight of hell's denizens -- and not her anger and selfishness -- that tore at the onion.