Like many who return home from a vacation, Celia had lost that stressed-out, furrowed-brow pallor of modern life. Her natural merry smile was back.

I figured a week back in the land of cell phones and bumper-to-bumper traffic would leach that sunlight right out of her face.

But several weeks later, her smile was still brightening, was still lighting her path.

On her trip with her family to St. John's in the Caribbean, she had discovered getting up at dawn. It was a practice she continued when she came back to "civilization." Greeting the dawn, she told me, gave her the time she had never allowed herself in her stressed-out life to "dream my life." Her stress load plummeted.

Getting up at dawn? Now that is right up there on my ideas of hell.

Her transformation was so distinct that it got my attention. I was reminded of one of my oldest friends, John. Even when we were chums back at Franklin Elementary, he had a whole day of play under his belt before he arrived at school. I have vivid memories of him continuing this practice when we were college roommates, yodeling obnoxiously at the dawn out our apartment window.

At 58, I wondered if John was still yodeling.

"Watching the sun rise from my deck remains a spiritual pleasure," he e-mailed me from Jefferson City, Mo. "In the dawning hours, I think about my mortality, my reason for being, what I've accomplished, what I must do in the time I have left. There is always a moment that comes when I find myself taking a deep breath, inhaling all that's around me with a quiet 'thank you' for all that's past and all that's to come. It's what I do for my mental health."

John corrected me about one thing. "Mike, I can't yodel. What you remember is me yelling at you to wake up and get to class."

True, this dawn thing is not my thing, but perhaps I should reconsider. Becoming an "early riser" wouldn't appeal to me. It sounds too much like the first step to becoming a regular at the "early bird" dinner specials. "Greeting the dawn," however, adds poetry to the endeavor.

I decided to give it a try ... and I did discover a few things.

First of all, I just may drop my irrational disdain for bird watch-ers.

Those birds are really something. Did you know they greet the dawn with a jubilant chorus? By the time the sun has securely risen, they quiet down, leaving a lovely hush over the earth, as they set about their tasks for the day; probably getting those worms that the early birds are supposedly entitled to.

I could see the colors and smell the smells in my garden that I had disrespectfully fallen into ignoring. I could actually experience the earthy taste and warming steam of the coffee instead of gulping it down as a mindless way to jump-start my day. I noticed there is a wonderful glowing, golden light.

Mostly I discovered a new perspective about the most plaguing metaphysical concern of my advancing years: the nature of time.

Time feels increasingly like it is collapsing. Is it really almost May? How did I live so many years in such a short time? Will this day be over before I have even realized it?

Sitting with the dawn, I had this wonderful experience of time expanding, filling up and lengthening each moment with sensation, wonder, a deepening awareness.

And then it occurs to me there is a practical benefit to this ritual. As John put it, getting up with the sun had the "added dimension of stealing time." Think about it. Adding 60 extra minutes to your day will net you 365 free hours in a year. That adds up to more than two months of 40-hour work weeks.

Get up even a half an hour earlier than that and you will be gifting yourself with a bonus year every decade!

Dr. Michael O.L. Seabaugh, a Cape Girardeau native, is a clinical psychologist who lives and works in Santa Barbara, Calif. Contact him at mseabaugh@semissourian.com.