Post 3

Living as an Emersonian friend meant that we had to be honest with our friends. We weren't allowed to use common conversation as enough to satisfy our friendships for the day. We weren't supposed to use compliments or gossip or common conversation with our friends, instead we had to use honesty, and only honesty. We were supposed to be sincere with our friends no matter what, and this was hard! When i saw my friends during the day, I wasn't even allowed to wave or say hi because that would be considered common conversation. I'm sure people thought i was ignoring them because i would make eye contact with them, and they would wave, and i would have to keep walking. Also, we weren't really supposed to tell our friends stories. A day as an Emersonian friend makes you realize how much our friendships rely on stories, and conversations, and gossip, and compliments. It depends on it so much to the point where it all almost seems fake. When all day, i wasn't allowed to give a friend a compliment or tell them something to make them feel better, it felt awkward not being able to have a normal conversation with friends, even if they were having a bad day and you couldn't comfort them. We had to use complete honesty. That was hard! When your friends need comforting and you can't give it to them and all you can give to them is sincerity, it makes you feel like a bad friend. It makes it seem like you don't care about them. Not to mention, honesty is not always acceptable in a situation. Often, to protect people we don't tell truth. Sometimes we only tell them pieces of hte truth to try to protect them from painful honesty that would hurt them. Thankfully, on my Emersonian day i didn't have to give anyone painful truth, but it was hard always being honest with people. Telling them their hair looked bad, or telling them you got a bad grade on a paper. There are some things that you don't feel you need your friends to know, but that is what Emerson says we need to stop. He says we need to be completely open with our friends, we need to almost become one person and they have to be the one person who we trust completely and allow to know everything about ourselves. Living as an Emersonian friend for a day was hard. It really made you realize how much we depend on common conversation, and how much we think that fake smiles and gossip can be a definition for a friendship. It makes you realize that it's supposed to be something deeper than that. It would be interesting if we all coould live as Emersonian friends, there would endless trust and endless honesty however, society is not ready to allow us to live like that, at least for not all of us to live like that. A passage that I took my inspiration from for this day states "I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal, that i may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him wih the simplicity and wholeness with which a chemical atom meets another." -Emerson