Is happiness important?

Everybody wants to be happy. The main motive behind the things we do is to be happy. Let's take an example, why do we work so hard to get a good job? So that we can earn money and have a decent life. Decent life means having the facilities that fulfill our needs and are convenient and convenience makes us feel good or shall we say gives us happiness. Another example is, what was the main reason behind all the modern inventions?
To make life easier and entertaining. An easy life means less problems which gives a sense of joy or happiness.

             But is happiness really important? Allow me to elaborate. When we are sad or depressed, we feel separate from everyone and feel as if nobody understands us. We feel lonely. We get to know our limits, our tolerance, ambitions, how we think even more clearly. It's like we've been living with this person the whole time but now somebody has put a mirror and we can see right through us, it's seems we've become transparent and we realize that this is who we really are. We see everything, from our passions to our failures, our weaknesses and our strengths and how they can help us in the time of distress.
                                        We go through people and learn how they could use us. At the end of the road we are a changed person. We realize that how naive and innocent we were before and how little we knew. We may not realize then but our whole perspective changes about how we look at things. We get wiser, we have more experience. At that time, it may feel obnoxious to go through depression but later when we look back, we know that it was a learning experience and there are many more to come but we are better prepared than we were before.
                                       When we are happy we feel confident and we have self esteem and we enjoy ourselves but when we are sad, we gain wisdom about the world. So is happiness really important if we get wiser when we are sad?
   
     Well my answer is, we go through the hard times, learn something, experience the other side of life, so that we could be happy. Both times are important in life, if we don't have the hard times, we'll never learn anything, so how will we move on? And as is said, everything passes either good or bad. Life is all about balance. To look at the sky you'll have to go through mud. Life will teach us a lot of lessons. Only if we try to learn them.