I Never Saved Anything for the Swim Back

Rewatching Gattaca, twenty years later

TL;DR:

On a quiet flight to Florida for a fishing trip, I rewatched the movie Gattaca—a film I hadn’t seen since college—and was reminded why it shaped me so deeply. Its message of defiance, sacrifice, and chasing dreams against the odds hit harder now, now that I understand what that defiance, that drive can cost. Like Vincent, I’m still chasing dreams. And I’m still not saving anything for the swim back.

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This past Wednesday, I flew down to Fort Lauderdale for a fishing trip with a good friend. Tarpon fishing for four days, just the two of us, chasing heat and salt and silence. I boarded a Delta flight from Cincinnati, and found myself in seat 4B—aisle seat, mini-water in hand, mind already trying to unplug.

I don’t usually get emotional at 30,000 feet.

But there it was on the Delta screen: Gattaca.

It stopped me cold.

This was my favorite movie in college. One I’ve referenced countless times in the years since. I’ve listed it in interviews, mentioned it on panels, maybe even worked it into a deck or two. But I hadn’t watched it since I was 22. Not once.

It hit me, all at once, that I wasn’t sure I wanted to.

Not because I didn’t love it, but because I did. And I was nervous. Nervous to find out that maybe it wasn’t as good as I remembered. Nervous to meet my younger self’s taste with my older self’s eyes.

But I pressed play anyway. And two hours later, I was wiping tears away, silently, in seat 4B, while the guy next to me demolished four bags of pretzels like it was his last meal and at least 5 Woodford Reserves (Phil, you’re a real one).

If you haven’t seen Gattaca—and given that it came out in 1997 (a sentence that makes me feel ancient), I’m not going to worry too much about spoilers—here’s the rough sketch:

The movie is set in a not-so-distant future where your DNA determines everything: your job prospects, your social standing, your value to society. Ethan Hawke plays Vincent, a man conceived naturally in a world where everyone else is genetically engineered. He’s told from birth that he’s “invalid,” destined for menial labor and chronic illness. But Vincent dreams of space. So he spends his life defying every limit that’s placed on him, borrowing identity, blood, and bone to get a shot at flying.

It’s a slow burn of a movie. Stylish, melancholic, stripped-down. No big explosions, no aliens, no snark. Just the quiet, relentless drive of one man to become more than the sum of his parts.

There’s a scene near the end that undoes me every time. Vincent’s older brother Anton, genetically perfect and pathologically bitter, confronts him—still trying to prove Vincent’s place in the world is a fraud. They return to a childhood game: swimming out into the ocean, as far as they can go, until one of them turns back.

Vincent wins.

Again.

And when Anton asks how he did it—how he made it that far without turning back—Vincent looks at him and says:

“I never saved anything for the swim back.”

That line lives in my bones.

It always did, even when I was young and didn’t fully understand what it meant. But sitting there in 4B, twenty years later, it landed differently. Deeper.

Because I’m in a moment now where the path ahead is steep, uncertain, and costly. I believe we are called to build something bigger than ourselves, for me—The Good Jobs Collective—a vision that requires not just skill or strategy, but sacrifice. It means letting go of safety nets. It means betting everything I’ve built on the belief that we can acquire and grow companies not to extract value, but to preserve dignity. To prove that good small business jobs—real, career-worthy, community-sustaining jobs—can still win across American communities.

And I realized something.

I still love Gattaca because I’m still Vincent. Still dreaming of space. Still chasing something I’m not supposed to have. Still swimming.

Only now, I know what it costs.

And I’m okay with that.

Because I’m not saving anything for the swim back.

Watch the scene here →