A willing submissive is a medium.
Like clay placed into the hands of a potter, surrender does not mean becoming nothing. It means becoming available to be shaped and the quality of the medium matters.
Clay filled with stones, grit and debris cannot simply be placed upon the wheel. Before the potter can create, she must stop. She must pick through it, remove the stones and repeatedly process the clay until it becomes workable.
So it is with submission.
If Madame must continually chase the submissive, extract information he already possesses, correct avoidable misunderstandings or prepare him for something he could have prepared for himself, her creative energy is spent processing the clay rather than creating with it.
The submissive must therefore arrive willing, prepared and precise.
Discipline removes the stones.
And then something much more interesting can begin.
The potter does not use one pressure everywhere.
She shapes the pot with different pressures: on the inside, softer; on the outside, more firmly.
Her hands respond to what the vessel requires.
The good-quality clay surrenders to the hands of the potter.
It does not surrender because it is without substance. Quite the opposite. It has integrity enough to withstand being worked.
It is patient.
It endures.
It yields where it must yield and holds where it must hold.
Under the potter's hands, what began as raw material slowly takes form.
And surrender is not the end of the process.
One day the vessel must face the kiln.
Heat transforms what the hands alone cannot. What was once soft becomes strong. What could once be reshaped now holds its form.
Then comes the glaze.
Colour. Lustre. Character. Beauty.
And eventually, there stands something that did not exist before.
A vessel bearing the marks of its making, yet possessing a character entirely its own.
The potter's heart bursts with pride each time she uses her faithful pot.
Not because the clay disappeared beneath her hands.
But because it surrendered sufficiently to participate in the realm of creative expression.