Last December, I took an unlimited pottery session.
One of the main lessons I learned was detachment. In pottery, you have to accept that you cannot fully control the outcome. Whether I throw once or fifty times, the piece can still fail. My skills can always improve. My expectations can still collapse.
Every stage of the process produces a different result. Imperfections can appear at any phase. I can spend hours shaping a piece, only for it to crack during firing in the kiln because I did not wedge it properly at the beginning. If I handle it too much, if it shifts off-center while throwing, if I add too much water or not enough, if I rush, or if I overwork the clay anything can go wrong. Everything matters.
Pottery teaches patience, repetition, and the humility to accept that you can create something and still walk away with nothing. In every session, I arrived, put music in my ears, wedged and threw, silently repeating the process. I walked home with cracked palms and an aching back, but it was therapeutic.
I did not want to bring anything home. I just wanted to enjoy the learning process, on repeat.
It had been a while since I allowed myself to be terrible at something. There were no stakes, no KPIs, no deliverables, no results, just a bad piece spinning on the wheel.
Note: So Azmi, this is to answer your question that weekend.
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It is a little like parenting, kan.
You try to shape them according to your standards, but every phase can unfold in ways you cannot control. And just like pottery, you learn to loosen your grip on the outcome. Sometimes the most loving thing is knowing when to stop shaping. In the end, the child becomes who they are becoming.
Your role is not to manufacture the final form, but to guide the process and then accept the outcome.
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