His unavoidable path

My mother was an English teacher. My elder sister, Letitia, her two daughters and my son are all in the education business. I am too—I just have a different classroom. It is unlikely that I could have become anyone else.

All hail the bookmobile

Imagine being a single woman raising three kids in Northern California and having to worry every single day about the safety of your Black children in a white world. In my mother’s mind, the safest place we could be was at home. But when the bookmobile came to our neighborhood, it was freedom. She said, “Yes! Go! Have at it!”

Finding the stage

I entered the St. Pius X seminary at 13, planning to be a priest. But a few years later, when I was beginning to question Catholic dogma, a teacher put me in the T.S. Eliot play Murder in the Cathedral as a priest, and even though I was just a teenage actor, people in the audience blessed themselves! And I thought, There’s power in acting. There is an opportunity for connection.

Trekkie observation

On Star Trek, putting on the visor took away 90 percent of my vision. And yet the job was to play somebody who could see more than everybody else. It was crazy.

Authenticity is powerful

I was looking forward to meeting Fred Rogers at this PBS party. I would get to meet the man behind the Mister Rogers mask. But there was no mask. I genuinely believe Fred Rogers was an enlightened being. In our conversation about kids, he said, “Don’t be afraid to be your authentic self. That’s who they need.”

Leave nothing unspoken

My father passed recently. We had a pretty complex relationship. Once he and my mom split up, I had little contact with him. There was a lot I needed to work out, so about five years ago I started conversations with my father. And when I got the news that he was gone, I felt complete.

Support storytelling

Storytelling is under assault. Tennessee just banned Roots in high school libraries. Our resistance to the truth will only continue to fester and blister and produce the ugliest of sores. So my commitment these days is to advance the cause of storytelling.

You have to learn how to love

My longest relationship before I met my wife was one year. I was too busy with all this other stuff when I was younger—firewalking with Tony Robbins, jumping out of airplanes, going to sweat lodge retreats. I didn’t understand the demands of love, or the rewards. I had to allow Stephanie to teach me. I had to stop resisting, to lower my guard. And staying married has been its own firewalk, its own jumping out of planes. —As told to Joel Stein

LeVar Burton, 69, host of the CW’s Trivial Pursuit game show, appears in the new film One Night Only. His memoir, Take My Word for It, will be published in November.