Everything is Connected

Friends,

I’ve spent the past week in the mountains, attempting to be off the grid, off the clock, and off the usual pace of things. At times, it was a sacred pause. A chance to sit, breathe, and read my favorite poet, Mary Oliver, whose words never fail to open a deeper dimension of attention.

She reminds me—again and again—that creation is one of the truest windows into how Reality works. That statement feels mysterious even as I type it, but if you’ve ever stood beside a river, or watched light pour through the trees, you know what I mean. The horizon, the insects, the foxes, the moon... for Mary, they weren’t just background—they were communion. I get that. I feel that. And on a hike this week, I said aloud to a dear friend: “All I’m really convinced of anymore is that everything is one, and it’s all connected.”

Now, shifting from the soul to the markets…

This was a wild week in the markets. Bitcoin touched all-time highs. $NVDA ( ▲ 0.5% ) briefly hit a $4 trillion valuation. Four. Trillion. That number feels like fiction—but here we are. Jensen Huang (the godfather of AI, as Dan Ives calls him) is now essentially the face of an era where GPUs are the new oil.

And yet, somehow, it all feels... connected. Like what I’m seeing in nature mirrors what I’m seeing in the economy. One doesn’t cancel the other out. They inform each other. Maybe this is the deeper promise of diversity—not sameness, but unity. A reminder that harmony doesn’t require uniformity.

So yes, I live in the tension—between the soul and the spreadsheet, the eternal and the immediate. But I think that’s where the real wisdom lives. That’s where I’ll keep showing up.

Thanks for reading. Wishing you a weekend filled with wonder—whether it comes from a rising market or a rising moon.

Warmly,
Ashton

P.S. If you’re looking for something to accompany a walk or a quiet moment this weekend, I’d love to invite you to revisit an episode of the podcast I recorded with Cory Allen on his book Now Is the Way. It’s a conversation about presence, attention, and what it means to truly be here now. You can listen to it here.