My friend’s small daughter was in a state of utter devastation. She desperately wanted to take her toy car into the bath with her. But – and this is key – she equally desperately did not want her toy car to get wet. There was no way to get what she wanted and she was forced to accept the unflinching reality: water is not dry. It hurt, and she wailed.

I can relate. There have been times, mostly when realising that my husband will not do or say or feel the thing that I want him to do or say or feel, when I have wanted to wail, just like that little girl. I have had to acknowledge – again and again – that he is who he is and not who I want him to be.

It can be so painful to discover that the universe is the way it is and not the way we want it to be, that other people are who they are and not who we want them to be. The Evri deliveryman, the person grunting next to you at the gym, your partner, your colleague, your child, your mother: they each have their own inherent nature that will not change to fit neatly inside the lines you have drawn for them in your mind.

When you hear it like that, “water is not dry” almost sounds like a religious aphorism, its meaning resonating beyond a straightforward description of H2O. It becomes an essential brick in our effort to build a better life. Because, if you have not yet acknowledged this fact, you might unconsciously be labouring under the assumption that, if you just try hard enough, you can make water whatever consistency you like. You might be exhausting yourself to the point of ill health to get through a impossibly long to-do list at work. You might be diligently trying to please a parent in order to receive love from them that they do not have the capacity to give. You might be seeking to turn or nudge your partner into being more ambitious, whether through subtle manipulation, bribery or domination.

It is only when we understand the fundamental differences between us that we are able to meet each other as separate individuals with our own thoughts, feelings and character. That is essential to forming meaningful relationships with respect and dignity at their core, rather than control.

It may sound defeatist to say the world is the way it is, but in truth it is a liberation. Because acknowledging the reality in front of you does not necessarily mean tolerating it; it means seeing it clearly and responding in freedom.

If you are able to recognise and then relinquish the desire to shape your water/universe/job/love interest to fit a precise hole in the jigsaw puzzle of your mind, you are then free to make your own choices (once the wailing has run its course). In turn, your love interests – and my husband – are free to grow and develop in their own way, rather than into our dolls.

You can say to yourself: I have an impossible job that I cannot do well in the time I’m paid to do it and my manager won’t listen, so I will try to get another job, or I will choose to devote more of my time to my work than I am paid to do. You can decide: my partner is the way he is, so I’m going to leave him. Or you might decide: my partner is the way she is, so I will see what love can grow around and through these difficulties and differences. You can choose whether you prefer to have a wet toy car, or a dry one that you can play with before and after a bath. You can choose to build a better life – one that is not stuck and stagnant because you are pouring all your energy into pretending to yourself that you live in a reality you prefer, rather than the one you are living in.

When a person can truly see that water is not dry, not only do they build a better life for themselves, but they can also inspire the rest of us to lead better lives.

I didn’t agree with many of his views, but one person with this clear vision of his reality, who chose not to tolerate it, was Alexei Navalny. It was thanks to his refusal to see things as powerful people wanted him to see them that he was able to fight against what many had blinded themselves to: that Vladimir Putin was not bluffing, that he was more dangerous than we wanted to believe. Navalny’s bravery cost him his life, but that bravery lives on in those who chose to join the “noon against Putin” protests in a show of strength and solidarity at the Russian presidential election on 17 March.

The impact of Navalny’s too-short life was so powerful because he lived it resolutely as himself, speaking the truth, with the courage to refuse to parrot that water was dry when he knew it to be wet.

• Moya Sarner is an NHS psychotherapist and the author of When I Grow Up – Conversations With Adults in Search of Adulthood