The only future worth entertaining is the one we can’t imagine at all

Richard’s statement, “The only future worth entertaining,” is a guarded invitation to imagine life beyond the past without claiming that the future can be fully anticipated or attained. By insisting that this future is one they “can’t imagine at all” and “we’ll never have except partially,” he makes uncertainty part of its value rather than an obstacle to it.

Formulation and Meaning

The wording holds possibility and limitation together. “Entertaining” suggests considering a future before knowing what it will contain; Richard emphasizes that particular word, marking the act of imagining as tentative. The future he describes is not a destination that can be mapped in advance. It remains beyond present understanding, and even when it arrives, it will be possessed only in fragments.

That qualification keeps the line from becoming a simple promise of escape or happiness. Richard offers no guarantee that the past can be undone, or that a new life will satisfy every desire. Instead, the statement makes room for change precisely because the future cannot be reduced to a familiar plan or complete resolution.

Immediate Context

The exchange follows an expression of willingness to accept anything unlike the past, even to leave by plane for anywhere. Against that urgency, Richard’s formulation neither names a destination nor prescribes a decision. It gives the desire for change a broader horizon while preserving the uncertainty of what change will mean.

The conversation then turns to divorce. The listener says she cannot do it quite yet, while also asking whether she must. That hesitation sharpens the line’s meaning: imagining a future beyond the past does not immediately settle the choices required to reach it. The possibility is real enough to be entertained, but remains partial and unresolved.

Narrative Significance

The expression offers an alternative to self-deception without substituting certainty for it. The surrounding scene distinguishes the loss of an illusion from the loss of an attainable past: what has fallen away is the listener’s belief about herself, not an already secured future. Richard’s words acknowledge that a different life may be possible while refusing to make it fully visible in advance.

The line’s central tension—between imagining change and being unable to picture its outcome—also gives the moment its open ending. It supports hope, but not as a forecast; the future matters because it exceeds what the characters can currently imagine, and whatever they eventually make of it will remain incomplete.