There are no higher emotions/values

[Edwardo Piet]

If there was a miserable person giving to others and making their lives good, then he wouldn't be able to perceive that as being good and worth living for without his positive emotions.  So, it wouldn't matter to that miserable person.  Also, an absence of suffering and misery can only make your life neutral (neither good nor bad) if you were like a robot because, as I said before, if you had neither positive nor negative emotions, then you would be perceiving no value in your life.

As far as I'm concerned an absence of bad is good. Like I said, I think Schopenhauer was right about that. Good is the absence of bad. It's the opposite viewpoint of the idea that evil is the absence of good. Which is how some Christians pathetically fail to deal with the problem of evil: They say evil doesn't exist as it's merely the absence of good. On the contrary, if there's nothing bad then it doesn't even matter whether there's anything good or not. The slighest bit of mild concern about your lack of good feelings is a slight bit of badness. Without even mild concern literally no one cares that there's no good feelings so it literally doesn't matter. And look at the positive feeling of relief for instance: It's a removal of pain.

And yes, someone who is miserable feels miserable but that doesn't mean their misery can't improve and it doesn't mean that they can't give pleasure to others.