Finding Thinking: A Distancing Technique

I find that when I start to write about something I've noticed I often start with the phrase, "I find."

"I find that things seem different to me since the turning of the weather." "I find that in thinking about the self, one necessarily detaches oneself from the thing one seeks to understand. This necessary distancing disallows the intimacy needed to truly find the 'I'."

What a pretentious bore. That "in thinking" business is the same thing. They're crutches. Instead of just diving in to what I want to write, I feel compelled to soften, qualify, distance myself from what I'm trying to say.

Sort of like telling someone something and beginning with "I just wanted to say..." Infuriating. Of course you wanted to say it, evidenced by the fact that you are now saying it.

Or, in the classroom setting, a hand in offered up tentatively, the synecdoche called upon by the teacher, causing the student, incredibly, to blush in voice and declare, "I was just going to say..."

Sure. This is, of course, true. You were, I was, going to say to say it, and now we are saying it. Phrase equals moot. It cancels itself out. Logically speaking, it has no purpose.

But, of course, it does. It is rare that anyone actually does anything illogical. They simply are operating under a different logic.

So what do these "I finds" and "just going to says" do? Why haven't we laughed them out of existence?

I leave that to you, dear reader, as part teaching tool, part cop out.

Good luck.