Wouldn't we, at least a little, like to know the future?  As I hope all of us know, however, we never will, fully, anyway.  Nonetheless, we try.  We cannot help but do so.  It's part of being human.
     On the other hand, recognizing our limits and limitations is also human.  Part of an exhibition titled "Form and Future" held in Palm Desert last fall was a piece that its maker called "Contemplating an Unknown Future."  It presents a gangly figure of weathered wood hanging onto a ladder, staring into space.  One may think here of the story of Jacob's ladder, the night the Hebrew patriarch Jacob had a dream in which he saw a ladder reaching to the heavens and angels descending and ascending upon it (see Genesis 28).  Or one may think of Ecclesiastes 3:11, the verse that tells readers that although humans are made to seek and look into the future, they will never understand or grasp it completely.  Or perhaps one remembers Jules Verne's Time Machine, the story of one man's journey into the world many thousands of years ahead of his own.  Or on a more comedic note, the Michael J. Fox film, "Back to the Future."  Whatever it is, we humans echo Georg Hegel's words that, "In the individual alone do the eternal moments of absolute truth unfold into existence."  We often envision ourselves as caught in the crossfires of wanting to know, understanding acutely that we all have ladders leading into our futures, yet also struck, even burdened by the weight of the inexorable presence of mortality.  We are dust, Genesis reminds us, and to dust we will one day go, but we are also flesh and blood sentient beings wanting to make sense of our present state and condition.
     It all comes down to trust.  Do we trust the fact of future--and why?  Do we trust because we believe it is all that is there, or do we trust because we believe it is only there because there is something greater still?