I’ve been taking pottery hand-building lessons recently.
And somewhere between my hands, the clay, and the quiet patience it demands, I learned something I wasn’t expecting.
One of the biggest keys to success in pottery…
is surrender.
Specifically, surrendering to the kiln.
The kiln isn’t a tool.
It’s a collaborator.
You can spend hours crafting the form. Smoothing the rim. Perfecting the balance. Choosing the glaze with intention and care.
And none of that guarantees what comes out the kiln.
It’s always a roll of the dice.
What you put into it is not what comes out the other side.
Colors run. Textures crack. Forms warp. Unexpected patterns emerge.
At first, this feels unfair.
Almost disrespectful to the effort you put in.
But then you realize something…
The beauty isn’t in the form you tried to control.
The beauty is in the spontaneity of what the kiln reveals.
If you reject what the kiln does, if you snarl at the imperfections, if you cling to what you expected, you will never create your best work.
Pottery teaches this brutally and beautifully.
But Creativity, in general, is a collaboration with the unknown.
And your success as a creator is found in understanding how this collaboration actually works.
Yes, there are many elements involved.
Discipline. Taste. Repetition. Technique. Patience. Practice.
But pottery emphasizes something I see most of us resist:
Surrender.
And this principle shows up everywhere.
When a producer sends a songwriter a beat, the writer must surrender to the tempo, the drops, the silence, the space between sounds.
They don’t fight the instrumental.
They listen to it. They write with it.
When a painter stands in front of a canvas, they must surrender to the size, to gravity, to how the paint falls, bleeds, and dries.
They don’t dominate the medium.
They respond to it.
Elizabeth Gilbert captures this idea perfectly in Big Magic when she writes:
“He trusts that the universe is in constant play and, specifically, that it wants to play with him.”
That’s what creativity demands of you.
Not suspicion. Not defensiveness. Not control.
Play.
When you trust that the universe is collaborating with you (not testing you, not sabotaging you) you stop bracing against uncertainty.
The kiln isn’t punishing you.
The paint isn’t betraying you.
The beat isn’t limiting you.
They’re playing.
And the moment you adopt that perspective, surrender stops feeling like loss…
and starts feeling like partnership.
That’s when creativity feels alive again.
I’m learning that the moment I stop asking, “Why didn’t it turn out how I planned?” and start asking, “What is this trying to become?” my work becomes play.
The kiln will always do what it wants.
Life will too.
Because life has a kiln.
You can do everything “right.”
Make careful decisions. Choose wisely. Prepare. Plan. Show up with integrity.
And still…
what comes out the other side won’t be what you pictured.
Relationships burn. Opportunities warp. Dreams crack, melt, or change color entirely. Timing alters everything.
If you judge your life by how closely it matches your expectations, you’ll live in a constant state of disappointment.
But if you understand that life is a collaborator, everything softens.
You start asking: “What is this shaping me into?”
Life, like the kiln, isn’t here to preserve your original form.
And when you stop fighting the heat, you come out stronger, truer, and more beautiful than what you first imagined.
In life and in every creative act, the unknown is an equal participant.
You don’t try to control it.
You don’t overpower it.
You don’t outthink it.
You learn from it.
You embrace it.
You create with it.
You play.
Stay creative,
