Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, the second-century sage to whom tradition attributes the core of the Zohar, once sent his son to the study house so that the scholars might bless him. What the son received sounded more like a curse.
"What you sow, you shall not reap. You shall bring in, and you shall not carry out. You shall carry out, and not bring in. Your house shall be destroyed, but your resting place shall be established. Your table shall be troubled, and you shall not see the new year."
The boy came home shaken. He thought the scholars had cursed him. He ran to his father for an explanation, and his father smiled.
"They blessed you in the deepest way, my son. Listen.
"'What you sow, you shall not reap' — you shall have children, and they shall not die before you. 'You shall bring in and not carry out' — you shall bring in daughters-in-law as brides for your sons, and your sons shall live to greet them; you shall not have to bury them. 'You shall carry out and not bring in' — you shall marry your daughters out, and their husbands shall not die. 'Your table shall be troubled' — by the children crowding around it. 'You shall not see the new year' — meaning, your wife shall not die in the year, forcing you to marry another. 'Your house shall be destroyed' — this house, this world, passes; but 'your resting place shall be established' — in the world to come."
Every curse, in his father's mouth, turned inside out into a blessing. The story, preserved as Gaster's exemplum No. 143, is really about how rabbinic Jews read the whole of human life. Sorrow and blessing often use the same sentence. The difference is whether you have a father who can translate.