Are you a bull or a bear? Of course, I'm talking about the familiar symbols that stand for trends in the stock market. Now, if you're a bull, you believe that stock prices generally will be going up. If you're a Bear, on the other hand, you are convinced that stock prices will be going down. Obviously, those of us who own stocks are interested in which way the market's heading. We hope that we've invested shrewdly and that the prices of our stocks will, over time, turn a tidy profit or, who knows, even make us a fortune. We may be counting on these investments for our future security. But what if prices of our stocks go down and we lose money? Now we may have something to worry about. We've lost all or a good part of our nest egg and maybe a lot of our confidence as well. We worked hard to earn and save that money and now it's gone. And gone with it maybe a lot of our hopes and security for the future. This kind of financial loss can take a terrible toll on people. I noticed a newspaper headline following the market's most recent spectacular nose dive that read, "Man Suffers Nervous Breakdown after Monday's Crash." Yes, it can happen. And I decided that it's likely the poor man in question had more than just money invested in the market. It's a good bet that besides his money, he had his self-worth, his pride and his future all riding on the market and he felt he'd lost it all. We recall the tragic stories associated with the stock market crash of 1929 that marked the beginning of the Great Depression. Fortunes were lost almost over night. Speculators who had invested heavily in the market with borrowed money were not only wiped out but left deeply in debt. In the days following, there was the awful spectacle of men leaping to their deaths from office windows rather than deal with the consequences of the financial disaster. Extreme cases? Certainly. Did greed play a part? Probably. But lessons like these make it clear that there's a better way of living than having your peace of mind depend wholly on your net worth. And especially if that net worth depends on such a capricious mechanism as the stock market. You see, I believe we're missing the point of what life is all about when we measure our self-worth by the dollar value of our bank or investment accounts. No question we should place value on the monetary wealth we?ve worked hard for, saved and put away to provide for a comfortable and secure future for ourselves and those we love. But the real treasure of peace of mind in life is found in how well we balance the money we have and the things money can buy with those priceless human values that ultimately sustain us.