The Night a Children's Book Made Me Cry in the Middle of Crossword

Day 18 of #100WorkDays100Articles - When simple wisdom hits harder than any research

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I was standing in Crossword's children's section last Tuesday, killing time while my son browsed graphic novels, when I saw it: "The Huge Bag of Worries" by Virginia Ironside.

The cover showed this little girl dragging an enormous blue bag behind her. Something about her face—tired, overwhelmed, but trying to look okay—stopped me cold.

I opened to a random page.

"Jenny worried about everything. She worried about her goldfish. She worried about the wobbly tooth. She worried about her Mum and Dad. She even worried about wars and bombs."

Standing there between the romance novels and self-help books, I felt my throat tighten.

That's my kid. That's every kid I know.

Hell, that's me.

Why This Book Is Perfect

Here's what makes "The Huge Bag of Worries" brilliant: it doesn't try to fix anything.

Jenny's bag gets heavier throughout the book. It follows her everywhere—to school, to bed, even to the bathroom. The illustrations show it growing bigger and bigger until she can barely drag it.

Sound familiar?

Most children's books would rush to solve this. Add some magical thinking. Make the worries disappear with positive affirmations or breathing exercises.

Not this one.

The solution comes when an old lady asks to see what's in the bag. She opens it up. They look at each worry together.

Some worries belong to other people (her parents' job stress). Some worries are shared by everyone (natural disasters, getting older). Some worries shrink when you examine them closely.

The bag doesn't disappear. It just gets manageable.

That's the most honest thing I've ever read about anxiety.

What This Has to Do With the AI Panic Everyone's Having

I've been thinking about this book all week, especially after the conversations I've been having with executives about AI implementation.

Last month, a CEO told me: "Our team is paralyzed. Everyone's either terrified AI will replace them or terrified we'll fall behind if we don't adopt it fast enough."

Sound familiar? We're all carrying huge bags of AI worries.

Will this replace our jobs? Are we moving too fast or too slow? What happens to human creativity? How do we compete with companies that have no ethical boundaries?

Most consultants want to solve these worries away. "Don't worry about displacement, think about augmentation!" "AI is just a tool!" "The future is human-AI collaboration!"

But what if that's missing the point entirely?

What if the goal isn't to eliminate our AI anxiety, but to examine it honestly?

Jenny doesn't need her worries fixed. She needs someone to help her look at them clearly.

We don't need AI that eliminates all uncertainty. We need to learn how to work with AI while staying human.

The Crossover Magic Nobody Talks About

Virginia Ironside wrote this book for children, but every adult who reads it recognizes themselves in Jenny.

That's what makes it a perfect crossover book—it doesn't condescend to kids or over-explain to adults. It just tells the truth about what it feels like to be human.

Worries are heavy. Carrying them alone makes them heavier. Looking at them with someone who cares makes them manageable.

This is wisdom that works at 8 or 48.

The illustrations by Frank Rodgers are deliberately simple—not Instagram-pretty, not digitally polished. They look like drawings in a child's journal. Real. Imperfect. Human.

When Jenny finally opens her bag, her face doesn't light up with artificial joy. She looks... relieved. Like someone who's been holding her breath for months and can finally exhale.

The Conversation We're Not Having

I keep thinking about Jenny's bag as I watch my son navigate his own worries.

He worries about JEE and NEET prep (fair). He worries about whether he's smart enough for his Board exam preparation (universal teenage doubt). He worries about climate change and whether the world will be livable when he's my age and if his friendships will survive Class 12 (all reasonable fears for fifteen).

My instinct is to minimize these worries, to reassure her, to solve them.

But what if that's missing the point?

What if the goal isn't to eliminate her bag of worries, but to help her learn to carry it with grace?

What if instead of building technologies that promise to reduce anxiety, we focused on building resilience for living with uncertainty?

The Business Question Hidden in Plain Sight

Every organization I work with is carrying a huge bag of AI worries.

Will this replace our people? Are we moving too fast or too slow? What if we get this wrong? How do we compete with companies that have no ethical constraints?

Most consultants want to minimize these concerns, sell confidence, promise clear answers.

But what if we opened the bag instead?

What if we looked at each worry honestly—some belong to the market, some are shared by everyone, some shrink when examined closely?

Here's what I've learned - the organizations that acknowledge their fears and examine them thoughtfully make better decisions than the ones that pretend everything's fine.

The companies still thriving from the internet transition in the 90s? They weren't the ones who ignored the disruption or the ones who panicked. They were the ones who sat with the uncertainty long enough to understand what it actually meant for their business.

AI feels different because it is different. But the approach that works is the same: open the bag, look at what's actually inside, decide what's yours to carry and what isn't.

What My Son Taught Me About Bags

Last night, I showed him the book.

"Huh. That's actually pretty heavy," he said, looking at Jenny dragging her bag. (High praise from a teenager.)

"What do you think she should do?"

He flipped through a few pages, reading quietly.

"I mean, you can't just ignore worries. They don't go away. But maybe if someone actually listens instead of trying to fix everything immediately..." He shrugged. "Sometimes you just need someone to acknowledge that yeah, this stuff is actually hard."

Fifteen years old, and he gets what most businesses don't.

You can't solve your way out of the human condition.

But you can choose who you examine it with.

Tomorrow's Question

I'm sitting here thinking about all the bags we're carrying—personal, professional, societal.

The AI anxiety is real. I see it in every boardroom, every team meeting, every conversation about the future of work.

My son's generation will grow up with AI the way I grew up with computers. But they're also inheriting our collective anxiety about what that means.

What if instead of trying to solve away their worries about AI, we taught them what Jenny learns in the book? That you can carry uncertainty without being crushed by it. That examining fears with someone who cares makes them manageable. That some things that seem terrifying get smaller when you look at them directly.

The question isn't whether AI will change everything—it already is.

The question is whether we'll help each other carry the uncertainty with wisdom or let it drag us down.

What's in your AI bag that you've been carrying alone?

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This is Day 18 of my #100WorkDays100Articles journey from corporate IT architect to conscious technology advocate. Some days the insights come from research papers. Some days they come from children's books found in Target.

Both matter.

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