How do lobsters grow?

Of all the posts you clicked this one to know how lobsters grow. And I kinda get it, who sits there wondering about lobster biology?Well, yesterday that was me. There I was, trying to button up my favorite white shirt with blue stripes (the one that definitely shrunk in the wash, because there's no way I gained weight), when I ended up reading about lobsters.

Don't ask me how. You know how it goes, one minute you're googling "how to unshrink clothes" and next thing you know, you're learning about sea creatures.

But anyway, let me walk you through the process, as it’s very fascinating, so I decided to share it.Lobsters are squishyA lobster is basically a soft, squishy animal living inside a hard shell. This shell is made of something called chitin: it's tough and protective, but it doesn't stretch or expand.

Inside this armor, the lobster has all its soft parts like the muscles, organs, and tissues that keep growing. When it's time to grow, hormones trigger the molting process. The shell starts getting softer between the tail and body. The lobster then pumps itself full of water, creating pressure inside. This pressure eventually cracks the shell open along its weak points.

The lobster then has to wiggle and struggle out of its old shell - the whole process takes about 30 minutes.

Right after molting, the lobster is completely exposed. Its new shell is like wet paper.

During this time, it hides under rocks because it's an easy target for predators. Here's something interesting that I learned, the lobster often eats its old shell as it needs the calcium from the old shell to make its new one strong. And this process can take several days.

Young lobsters go through this a lot, about 25 times in their first 5-7 years until they weigh about a pound. After that, males molt once a year, females every two years.

Each new molt makes them about 15% longer and 40% heavier. Scientists think lobsters can live up to 100 years, continuing to molt and grow the whole time. The biggest ones can reach 3 feet in length.

You can tell a newly molted lobster by its shell. It's bright red and paper-thin, unlike the hard, darker shells of lobsters that haven't molted recently.

This is not about lobsters

Let's be honest. This post wasn't really about lobster biology. Sure, some of you might genuinely be interested in how they grow - I was too when I first read about it. But there are plenty of articles and videos out there if you want to dive deep into the science of it all.

The real reason I wrote this came from yesterday, standing in front of my mirror at 11 PM, asking myself what's happening. I have a job: a good one by most standards. I have things to be grateful for, I know that. But something feels off.

It's that feeling when your mind starts racing and you can't stop it. Like driving an overthinking Toyota down a steep road, you keep picking up speed, thoughts coming up, one after another like “should I switch jobs?” “am I good enough?” “why does everyone else seem to have it figured out?”

And what do I do when these thoughts get too heavy? I reach for the easiest escape.

Anything to avoid sitting with that uncomfortable feeling.

Netflix. I scroll through social media until my eyes hurt watching those slop videos that make no sense. Ordering food I don't need, hell am not even hungry, but McDonald’s is like a drug, it makes me think am okay.

Lobsters are braver than me

But Lobster, yeah, Lobster is braver than me.

Do you know what’s the primary stimulus for a Lobster to grow? It’s discomfort.

The internal pressure that builds up makes the Lobster think that the current shell is not meant for it, and if it wants to stay alive, and live better, it needs to let go and break it so it can allow the new shell to cover it.

Now imagine if a lobster acted like us. Picture it walking into a doctor's office, slouching in the chair, saying "Doc, I'm not feeling great lately. Everything feels tight, uncomfortable." And the doctor, meaning well, pulls out a prescription pad: "Take this pill. You'll feel better."

And sure, the lobster would feel fine. For a while. But that shell would still be too tight. So maybe one pill becomes two. Then the lobster needs something stronger. Maybe it starts spending hours scrolling through shelltok. Orders UberEats three times a day. Picks up a drinking habit. Anything to numb that squeeze.

The pressure doesn't go away though. It builds. And builds. Until that lobster, either gives up completely or becomes so miserable it spreads that misery around.

So what should the Lobster do?

I don't know about the lobster, but I've learned something, and that is to just feel the pressure and stay with it. To sit in that uncomfortable space where everything feels tight. Where your mind keeps telling you to run, to hide, to do anything but face it.

Escape is not a good response. Never was, never will be.

Every time you reach for your phone instead of facing that conversation, every time you zone out in another mindless meeting instead of making a change, every time you tell yourself "it's fine" when you know it's not, you're just building walls around yourself. Eventually, those walls get so thick, so comfortable, that you forget how to break free.

You wake up ten years later in the same dead-end job, same routine, same excuses. Just older, harder, more stuck.

But now I think I've figured something out.

The pressure isn't something I need to control. Those moments when everything feels tight, when my mind races at 2 AM, when I question every choice I've made - they're not enemies to fight. They're not problems to solve.

We give these feelings such ugly names. Anxiety. Stress. Crisis. Mid-life, quarter-life, any-life crisis. But that's just us, trying to label something we don't want to face.

A lobster doesn't label its discomfort. It doesn't try to explain away its pressure. It simply recognizes it for what it is. A signal. A moment of possibility.

Maybe that's what I need to learn. Not to escape the pressure, not to fight it, but to let it do its work. To understand that this squeeze, this tightness, this discomfort, it's not here to break me.

It's here to make me break free.

Some shells need to crack for new ones to form. Some pressures need to be felt for growth to happen. And some discomfort isn't meant to be solved.

It's meant to be outgrown.