We’re surrounded by platitudes and clichés. We say, “Bless you!” when someone sneezes, without thinking what it means; we ask, “How are you?” but are hardly interested to hear the response; we bless people “You should live to 120,” without considering the blessing’s value if it came true.

This time of year we eat the apple dipped in honey and wish each other, “May you have a sweet new year.” But based on experience, is there reason to believe that the coming year will be only good?

Doesn’t every year bring its mix of good and bad times, of ups and downs? Was last year all sweet, no pain and suffering?

There’s more to a Jewish custom, and the apple and honey symbol, than meets the eye. Rather than wishful thinking, it also serves as a lesson. Not just an empty wish, it’s a powerful piece of advice on dealing and coping with life’s rough edges.

Both apples and honey are sweet, but there is a basic difference: Apples are predictably sweet, while the sweetness of honey is totally unexpected.

An apple is a sweet fruit that grows on a tree. There’s nothing remarkable; nature offers us many colorful and attractive fruits that are sweet, so the apple's sweetness is not at all surprising.

But who would have guessed that honey would be sweet? Honey is produced by the bee - an inedible insect that can be a real pain: it’s not all just roses and nectar, there’s also the sting. What a novelty and irony that the honey produced by a stinging insect is actually sweet, even sweeter than an apple!

We have times of predictably sweet family nachas and celebration, success in our careers, personal triumphs and harmonious relationships. But there’s also an unexpected sweetness that comes from challenge, when life turns in an undesired direction: we suffer a loss, our career is jeopardized, we fail to reach our goals, our relationships are strained and tested- occasions when we feel life's cruel sting.

At the moment, these challenges are bitterly painful. But it is precisely at those times that the depth of our soul is revealed. If we tap in to our reserves of inner strength and withstand the difficulties to overcome the obstacles to our happiness, we reveal layers of our personality that we’d never know had we not been challenged. Something deeper is brought out when we are tested, and we are better off for it.

Tension in a relationship is painful at the time, but nothing can compare to the closeness achieved by reconciling afterwards. Losing a job is devastating, but it can lead us to bigger and better things to move onto. Loneliness can be devastating, but can also open us to higher levels of self-knowledge. We’ve all experienced painful events, but in retrospect we’re sometimes blessed to say, “Thank G-d for the tough times - where would I be without them!”

So we eat apples and honey on the first day of Rosh Hashanah. As well as the sweet apple times, there may be the odd bee sting ahead. But let's learn to put things in perspective even before they happen. The good times are sweet, and the tough times sting at first, but what they bring can be even sweeter.

Have a good and sweet new year!