To be honest, I’m not exactly sure what I’ll be doing this Memorial Day. I’m pretty sure a televised ball game, a couple of freshly grilled hot dogs and comfort — lots of comfort — will be involved.

I’m sort of big on comfort – on Memorial Day and just about every other day of the year. Not that I’ve ever been especially uncomfortable during any time in my life that wasn’t called “Scout camp.” I’m just really anxious to make sure things stay that way.

So, I imagine, is Ethan, a 6-year-old boy in Alabama who was rescued last February after being kidnapped and held hostage for a week in a cramped and decidedly uncomfortable underground bunker. I can’t even imagine how desperately Ethan and his family are clinging to comfort — and to each other — this Memorial Day as they try to forget the nightmare they lived through just a few months ago — a nightmare that was brought to a happy conclusion as a result of a daring rescue executed by the FBI’s elite Hostage Rescue Team.

For the members of the HRT, however, this Memorial Day is likely to be difficult as they grapple with the loss of two of their colleagues, Christopher Lorek and Stephen Shaw, who died this past weekend during a training accident. As FBI Director Robert Mueller said, these two men, along with every other HRT member, “accepted the highest risk each and every day, whether on missions or in training.”

Think about that for a second. For most of us, our lives are pretty comfortable. Oh sure, we have the day-to-day stresses of bills, jobs and families. But very few of us leave the house each day prepared to put our lives on the line for those around us — including people we don’t even know. We focus instead on achieving our personal goals, taking care of our families, keeping the boss happy, and getting through rush hour traffic in time to watch our favorite TV shows — usually from the most comfortable chair in our comfortable homes surrounded by the things that make us … you know … comfortable.

Meanwhile, we tend to forget that in order to keep our comfortable lives humming along, a select few of us must be prepared to face that “highest risk,” every day. They spend most of their time uncomfortably — training in dangerously unpleasant situations and conditions — so that when our comfortable lives are upended, like it was for Ethan and his family, they are prepared to stand between us and the evil that we are largely allowed to ignore.

Because they are there.

This Monday many of our fellow citizens will spend Memorial Day in a firehouse, a police station, aboard a submarine in the Atlantic, on a military base in Afghanistan or on a special forces training exercise. They will be lonely, nervous, hungry and, more than anything else, uncomfortable. But they’re OK with that, because they understand the exponential good their sacrifice provides. That’s why they do it. They place our comfort above their own.

For most of the rest of us, it will be a day for food, friends, family and fun. And that’s just as it should be, because that’s what folks like our HRT heroes are so anxiously engaged in trying to protect. But may I respectfully suggest that sometime during our national day of remembering, we take advantage of any opportunity we have to thank the uncomfortable among us: the policeman on his beat, the soldier and his family who live in our neighborhood, the fireman waiting at his station in case one of our barbecues gets a little out of hand.

Or you can join me — and, I suspect, Ethan’s family — in a prayer of gratitude for people like Christopher Lorek and Stephen Shaw. While we’re at it, we might also pray for a little peace and comfort for those they have left behind.

I think we can all get comfortable with that.

(To read more by Joseph B. Walker please go to www.josephbwalker.com .)

Newsletter