Two different Portraits

We watch Stephen Dedalus grow before our eyes in James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Joyce titled his novel A Portrait, yet the book contains remarkably few literal descriptions of portraits. Instead, Joyce paints a portrait through experience. His canvas is not oil and brush but memory, suffering, beauty, and choice. Stephen Dedalus gradually discovers who he is by living through childhood, family conflict, temptation, faith, and finally artistic awakening. The portrait is never completed in a single moment. It emerges one experience at a time. Each of us can relate as we read and reflect on our own youth and the events, people, and faith that molded us.

After finishing the book, I imagined a different title for our recent book, How to Build an Adventurous Family: The Portrait of a Young Family. It chronicles our experiences as a young couple all the way to becoming grandparents, and our children from their youth into adulthood. Joyce's character, Stephen, ultimately had to leave Ireland to become the artist he wanted to be. We, however, had to leave Fort Worth to discover the value of home and the enduring institutions of family and faith.

Throughout Joyce's novel, Stephen encounters portraits already hanging on walls. In his home, they represent family heritage. At Clongowes and Belvedere, they portray saints, Jesuits, founders, and distinguished men whose lives embody the virtues the schools hope to reproduce. Political heroes such as Charles Stewart Parnell also become symbolic portraits, inviting young Irishmen to adopt predetermined identities.

Stephen eventually rejects them all. His famous declaration captures this determination:

"I will not serve that in which I no longer believe whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church."

Stephen refuses to allow others to paint his identity. He insists on creating his own.

How to Build an Adventurous Family begins with a different premise. The question is not whether children should reject inherited portraits but whether parents are intentionally painting one at all. Every family creates a portrait. Some simply do so accidentally.

The book repeatedly argues that shared experiences shape family identity more powerfully than possessions or schedules. As it observes, "A life of experiences creates stories, and stories deepen relationships." Those stories become the family portrait.

Unlike the static portraits hanging in Joyce's schools, the family portrait remains unfinished. Every adventure adds another brushstroke.

One of Joyce's most celebrated declarations comes near the conclusion:

"Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience."

Stephen recognizes that experience itself—not merely education or doctrine—is his greatest teacher. This conviction resonates deeply with How to Build an Adventurous Family. The book openly acknowledges that it was "shaped by experience, not expertise," drawing on decades of intentional family life rather than abstract theory. The mountain becomes a classroom. The road trip becomes an opportunity for conversation. Even failure becomes formative.

One of the recurring themes throughout the book is that challenge builds confidence. Parents cannot manufacture mature adults simply through instruction. Children discover courage only after doing difficult things. Stephen discovers himself by leaving familiar ground. Families discover themselves by walking unfamiliar trails together.

Neither Joyce nor our family believes identity appears suddenly. Joyce accomplishes this stylistically. The language itself matures as Stephen matures. The opening pages sound like the fragmented perceptions of a child: "Once upon a time and a very good time it was..." By the final chapter, Stephen is discussing Aristotle, Aquinas, aesthetics, and artistic vocation. Joyce's changing prose becomes the portrait.

Similarly, How to Build an Adventurous Family argues that family identity emerges gradually through repeated experiences. Our chapter on sunrises makes this point beautifully. A single sunrise changes little. But dozens of sunrises experienced together begin shaping the way a family sees the world. Awe becomes habitual. Gratitude becomes normal.

I enjoyed reading Joyce's book. It caused me to reflect on my own childhood and some of the life-changing events that helped me discover who I was.