Time & Perspective Quote by Dale Dauten

Dauten’s line dodges the usual success-myth bravado and lands somewhere more interesting: a hard-earned humility. “Reverence” is the tell. It’s not optimism, not hustle-culture chest-thumping; it’s the posture you take after you’ve watched outcomes refuse to obey effort. Spend long enough near wins and losses and you stop treating achievement as a moral scoreboard. You start treating it as contingency: a volatile mix of timing, talent, systems, luck, and stamina. That’s where “possibility” becomes sacred, not cheesy.

The quote’s intent is corrective. It pushes back against the two lazy stories we tell about performance: that success is proof you’re exceptional, or that failure is proof you’re deficient. Dauten suggests a third education, the one you get from proximity. Being “around” success and failure implies observation, mentorship, collaboration, maybe even leadership - the adult recognition that results are often communal and contextual. It’s a subtle critique of individualism: the closer you are to the machinery of outcomes, the less you believe in simple hero narratives.

The subtext is also about risk. Reverence for possibility means you don’t cheapen it. You don’t assume the good will repeat on demand, and you don’t treat the bad as destiny. That stance produces a certain ethical seriousness: you prepare, you stay curious, you keep the door cracked for reversals. In a culture addicted to certainty - hot takes, five-step plans, “manifesting” - Dauten argues that the wisest people are the ones who’ve seen enough to respect what can still happen.