Lobsters are not the nicest-looking shellfish (crustaceans) but, nevertheless, they offer important lessons for us as we age.

I recently took a boat tour on Prince Edward Island, Canada, where we visited the edge of a small island designated as a seal sanctuary and also learned about lobsters—their structure, habits, life cycles, etc. The tour stimulated me to reflect on how being in nature can teach us about our own existential quests for meaning, especially as we transition through midlife. As Joseph Campbell, author of The Hero’s Journey, so wisely advised, “The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.”1

A bit about the lobster:

Perhaps the most important lesson we can learn from the lobster has to do with molting. Molting is the process by which a lobster wiggles and struggles out of their current, older, smaller shell so that a new, softer, larger shell can be exposed and eventually hardens in place. The lobster takes in water to expand its body size to fit the new shell until their body grows to the size of the new shell.

Molting happens frequently when a lobster is young, before settling into a routine of molting every year or so when........

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