A free, indeterminate, future means that nothing has been definitely decided. We always have the benefit of the doubt. We can always make things better. We can always hope, and that hope will never be irrational.
It is possible that we will not get the job, nor get the girl, nor live through the next 24 hours, but none of these negative outcomes is a certainty (assuming that we are not actually dying, or unsuited, to the one or to the other).
An indeterminate future means that at one and the same time it is possible that we will get the job ; it is possible that the beloved will accept our suit ; it is possible that we will succeed in bringing the damaged sailboat safely back to land ; and it is also possible that we will fail, dismally or fatally, in any of these endeavors.
I do not mean by this that the future is merely unknown, or even unknowable. It is not a question of being unable to predict the future.
I mean, rather, that the future itself does not “know” what it will be. The future itself is multiple and in flux, without any but the ghostly being of probability, until all of those probabilities collapse into one real moment, which WE experience as a continuous narrative : our life, and the life of the world around us.
This eternal moment of now, is the only “real” state of the universe ; while the past has the reality of present memory and forensic evidence ; but the future has no distinct reality at all.
To live in a world where the future is irrevocably fixed – or to believe we live in such a world — is to live in anguish (or passive resignation) while waiting to “find out” what the future will bring.
To live in a world where the future is undetermined, or to believe we live in such a world, is to leave a narrow dark cell to live in fresh air and light ; to breath freely ; to hope ; to plan ; to achieve ; to fail, certainly ; but always to begin again.