Is Happiness Your Right?

People say they "have a right to be happy", but happiness isn't a birthright. Happiness is an objective to be achieved through wisdom and hard work.
Before you say that wisdom is contrary to happiness and that "ignorance is bliss", a statement with which I do fully agree, please be reminded that wisdom is not the same as knowledge.

According to Wikipedia: Wisdom is a deep understanding and realizing of people, things, events or situations, resulting in the ability to choose or act to consistently produce the optimum results with a minimum of time and energy. Wisdom is the ability to optimally (effectively and efficiently) apply perceptions and knowledge and so produce the desired results. Wisdom is comprehension of what is true or right coupled with optimum judgment as to action. Synonyms include: sagacity, discernment, or insight. Wisdom often requires control of one's emotional reactions (the "passions") so that one's principles, reason and knowledge prevail to determine one's actions.

Again according to Wikipedia: Knowledge is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as (i) expertise, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject; (ii) what is known in a particular field or in total; facts and information; or (iii) awareness or familiarity gained by experience of a fact or situation. (...) The term knowledge is also used to mean the confident understanding of a subject with the ability to use it for a specific purpose if appropriate.

Hence, knowledge is but the birth of wisdom, and ignorance is not the opposite of widsom, though it is the opposite of knowledge. Thus, while happiness abhores knowledge, it requires wisdom.