Live or dead in the game of life. In 1970, a British mathematician named Conway devised a game he call Life. The game is played on a grid of square cells that looks like graph paper. Each cell is either dead or alive. Live cells can become dead and dead cells live. The life and death of a cell depends on its relationship with its eight neighbour cells. The rules of Conway’s Game of Life are simple. A live cell with fewer than two live neighbours dies, as if caused by under-population. A live cell with more than three live neighbours dies, as if by overcrowding. A live cell with two or three live neighbours lives on to the next generation. A dead cell with exactly three live neighbours becomes a live cell, as if by reproduction. When animated on a computer patterns evolve of life and death from interactions with neighbors. The evolution of patterns is determined by the initial placement of live cells. One interacts with the Game of Life by creating an initial configuration and observing how it evolves. The evolving patterns mimic resiliency. Each Game of Life tests the capacity of the initial arrangement of live cells to tolerate disturbance without collapsing into a static state.

Real resilience has the capacity to anticipate and plan for the future. That capacity allows us to become unstuck even when life seems to have boxed us in.