When Emerson is With his Friends, What Do they Talk About?

"The only way to have a friend is to be one"
"let [a friend] be to me a spirit"

Being a friend, in the Emersonian sense, is to walk the very fine line of both being an active and involved friend and knowing when to back off and let your friend be a solitary being. To do this, you have to speak sincerely with friends, and avoid frivolous conversation; like gossip and asking "how are you doing" when you don't really care how they're doing.

"Sincerity is the luxury allowed, like diadems and authority, only to the highest rank"

Another thing that two good friends have is trust. Just as a good friend should be sincere in order to invite trust, one should give "audacious trust" to a friend. Say someone is trying to be a good Emersonian friend--being simple and honest and avoiding useless talk--and their friend is going on and on about who likes who and what so-and-so thinks of him or her; gossip. As an Emersonian friend, one would find it very difficult at times to talk to these people.
Speaking of this, I spent one day as an Emersonian friend; and it wasn't the easiest thing to do. The first thing that came to mind was, "wow, I'm going to sound crazy; refusing to talk about meaningless things is just...unnatural." People make frivolous small talk as a normal part of our existance. With many of our friends, we make small talk either because we don't trust them enough to confide in them or because we just don't have anything in mind to talk about. In fact, Emerson tells a story about a man who tried to be a true Emersonian friend:
"I knew a man who under a certain religious frenzy cast off this drapery [of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought], and omitting all compliment and commonplace, spoke to the conscience of every person he encountered, and that with great insight and beauty. At first he was resisted, and all men agreed he was mad. But persisting--as indeed he could not help doing--for some time in this course, he attained to the advantage of bringing every man of his acquaintance into true relations with him."

This was the biggest challenge I faced: trying not to care what other people thought. In fact, most of my friends basically could not stay on a deep, sincere topic for longer than a minute. Whenever there was a lull in the conversation, it would go back to "so, I heard everyone got owned on that chem. test" or something about Winter Formal. Even though I spend most of my time hanging out with guys, the two meaningful conversations I had throughout the course of the day were both from talking with girls. It's strange to think, because I probably had fifteen or twenty substantial conversations with people throughout the day, but girls seemed much more ready to talk about "sincere" things like feelings and emotions than guys. But that's just kinda what we do; guys don't tend to talk about that stuff too often. That's why it felt weird to talk about it with guy friends but not so much with girls. And it's kind of funny how Emerson always talks about his friends as being male--I don't think he ever refers to a friend as she or her--but it seems like being more in-touch with your true self would appeal way more to girls than guys. We're not too big on that stuff; but I guess if I'm going to have to spend some time contemplating nature in the near future, I'm going to get plenty in touch with my inner feelings.
In any case, the second problem I faced was that no one really seemed to know what their inner feelings were; it was like no one I talked to had spent enough time thinking about their own self to vocalize it cohesively. This friend of mine, she has a bit of a dating issue; her boyfriend isn't the smoothest guy in the world, and clearly just as inhibited as any of us. She doesn't quite know what to make of this, because she still likes him regardless; but when we were talking about this, and about Winter Formal, time and time again it seemed like she didn't know enough about herself and the way she thinks to even begin to understand how he thinks.
That's one thing I'm definitely happy about: I may not have it all, but I know who I am at least; and I know, at the psychological level, why I think what I think. And it helps me to figure out why other people think the way they do. But when other people don't seem to know why they think what they think, being an Emersonian friend is a bit of a challenge.
In any case, I believe in the phrase "you are who you are;" and being a strictly Emersonian friend isn't who I am. I think that's the way it is for a lot of us: you have a few good friends who you can open up to, and be a true Emersonian friend, but human society is built too strongly upon hiding your feelings behind meaningless conversation and such to really allow any of us to be true Emersonian friends all the time. It's a good idea, and I like it; but, like so many of Emerson's philosophy, it tends to stand at odds to human nature. We need frivolous conversation, and we need to hide our emotions at certain times; but at least an intelligent person can strive to be a good, sincere friend when it is wanted or needed and be just like every other human being when it is not.