Psychologist and author Richard Wiseman, while we were discussing people’s tendency to regret decisions in their lives, suggested the image of a jar of coloured threads: try to remove one and the whole bundle comes out with it. The same evocative image suits our purposes here: a friend’s occasional spinelessness is impossible to untangle from his striking kindness of which we are so fond; another’s occasional arrogance is commensurate with his appealing self-sufficiency and independence.
