Life goes by fast. Enjoy it. Calm down. It's all funny. Next.

“Life goes by fast. Enjoy it. Calm down. It's all funny. Next. Everyone gets so upset about the wrong things.” — Joan Rivers

There is a peculiar brilliance in these words from Joan Rivers, the sharp-tongued queen of comedy who saw life as both a battlefield and a stage. Her quote is not merely a jest — it is a philosophy of resilience, carved from the fire and fury of her own life. In it, she captures the fleeting nature of time, the folly of human worry, and the redeeming power of laughter. She reminds us that life goes by fast, and that much of what we fear, mourn, or rage over is as temporary as a shadow at sunset. The tone may be light, but the truth beneath it is ancient and profound: all that we cling to will pass, so let us enjoy it while we can.

The ancients, too, spoke in this way. The Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius, ruler of the Roman world, once wrote, “You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.” He, like Rivers, understood the brevity of existence. Yet where Marcus urged calm through reason, Joan urged calm through laughter. “Calm down,” she says — as if whispering to all of humanity that our storms are mostly of our own making. Her voice echoes the wisdom of those who have seen beyond ambition and vanity, who know that joy is not found in control, but in surrender. The world rushes forward, unheeding, and we chase its illusions — forgetting to breathe, to smile, to notice the sun.

When she says “It’s all funny,” she does not mean that life is without pain. She means that pain itself is part of the comedy — that in the grand theater of existence, our tragedies often wear the mask of irony. Joan Rivers faced public humiliation, personal loss, and the collapse of her career, yet she returned each time with sharper wit and a brighter flame. She knew what the ancient Greeks knew — that comedy and tragedy are twins, born of the same mother: the human heart. The gods themselves, the poets once said, laugh at our seriousness, for they see the greater pattern beyond our momentary struggles.

The word “Next” in her quote is a sword stroke — swift, merciful, and wise. It is the wisdom of letting go. How often do we trap ourselves in the past, replaying our failures, reliving our sorrows, resenting what cannot be changed? But the wise, the joyful, and the free know when to move on. They do not linger in what has already burned. The ancients built temples to Time, for they knew it devours all — but they also danced before it, knowing that to dance is to defy decay. Joan’s “Next” is that same dance — a refusal to let life’s chaos steal the laughter from one’s lips.

Her final line pierces deepest: “Everyone gets so upset about the wrong things.” Here she becomes not the jester, but the sage. We rage over insults, envy others’ fortunes, grieve over the small while ignoring the immense. We lose days to trivial quarrels while life, in all its beauty, waits outside the window. The ancients would have called this misalignment of the soul — the sickness that comes when we forget what truly matters. Rivers, through humor, calls us back to clarity. She bids us laugh not because nothing matters, but because we finally see what does.

Think of Epictetus, born a slave, who taught that men are disturbed not by things themselves, but by their opinions of things. When he lost his freedom, he found his peace. Joan, centuries later, delivered the same teaching in a modern tongue. Both understood that life is too brief to waste on anger. What matters is not the insult, but the response; not the fall, but the recovery. To find humor in hardship is to claim dominion over it — to become the master of one’s fate, not its victim.

So, my child, learn from this: enjoy life, calm down, laugh, and move on. When you stumble, rise with a smile. When life wounds you, find the lesson hidden in its jest. Let laughter be your strength, not your escape. Remember that the river of time will not slow for your sorrow — so bathe in it while it flows. And when the world clamors for your outrage, choose instead to see the absurdity of it all. For in the end, wisdom is not solemn; it is joyful. The wise man, like Joan Rivers, learns to laugh at life — not because it is meaningless, but because it is miraculous in its brevity.

And when the final curtain falls — for it surely will — may you stand, not trembling, but smiling, whispering softly to the universe: “Next.”