[We] Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
[We] Admitted….
In “admitted,” we find the second repetition of an action within the Twelve Steps. Steps Three, Four, Eight, and Nine all use the verb “to make.” Here, the verb from Step One repeats: “to admit.”
Rather than the First Step’s use of admit, seemingly in the sense to allow or permit a truth in, the Step Five instance seems to allow a truth out. This sense is actually very much in keeping with the Latin sources of the word: ad- a prefix meaning “toward” (or “to, at, about”) and mittere “to send” or “to let go.”
Admit is a transitive verb, an action in need of a direct object, like hit: one always hits something; one always admits something. Additionally, an indirect object can be in the mix: “I hit the ball to him.” “The guard admitted him to the building.” No indirect object for admit is mentioned in Step One; in Step Five, three are specifically named.
[We] Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being….
Step One does not provide a destination to which (or to whom) the admission goes. Step Five provides three such indirect objects.
The first of the three is also a repetition: the second of four iterations of the term, God. This mention is without the qualifier from Step Three, “as we understood Him.”
The second destination or recipient, ourselves, is again understood by case used throughout not to mean an action taken en masse, but taken by many: each admits to himself or herself.
The last of the three is not as simple as it might be: it does not say, “someone,” “another,” “someone else,” or “another person.” The term used may be considered a relative newcomer to the English lexicon, and carries with it at least a hint of the nomenclature of modern scientific inquiry: human being.
Neither the gerund being nor the noun human, taken separately, is a new addition to the language. Being is from Middle English, c. 1250. Human also springs from Middle English, humaine, c. 1350. Taken together, however, as they are in today’s speech without second thought, they form a term which did not appear until nearly the 18th century.
I like to think the term “human being” is used as an aid to recovery in and of itself: we are reminded of what we are, of how we fit in the scheme of things: we are neither less than nor more than human beings; our “right size” is human being. Some etymologists posit that “human” is derived from a word (humus soil) which is meant to distinguish we earthly beings from heavenly beings, or gods. We can take steps toward thinking of ourselves no longer as either gods or worms, or swinging wildly from one perception to the other (“egomaniacs with inferiority complexes”), but find truth, solace—and company—in being human.
Sandwiched in the middle, as if to hide it, is what I refer to as Step 5b. One can readily see there are three to whom admittance is made—the reason I sometimes refer to this Step as 5 a, b, and c: a) God, b) ourselves, c) another human being.
Is the most frightening admission of the three in Step Five to another human being? For many Twelve-Step practitioners, it may be. At that point, any secret is truly revealed.
“Confession is good for the soul,” goes the maxim, and nearly everyone understands that old saw to mean confessing to another person. The more religious among us may understand it to mean confessing to a person authorized by sect, as well as confessing to God. Religious or not, English-speakers familiar with this maxim understand: no one confesses to himself or herself. That isn’t the nature of confession.
Admit is a slightly different action. We may actually admit—or refuse to admit—to ourselves without involving another person or God. Is it possible, though, to admit to anything external what we have not already admitted internally to ourselves?
Years after Alcoholics Anonymous had been printed that first time, Bill wrote, “When we are honest with another person, it confirms that we have been honest with ourselves and with God.” [Twelve & Twelve, p60.] Why, then, mention the other two, at all?
The wise understand knowledge is not only in answers: much depends on the question. If I’m driving from Akron to Cleveland and I ask, “How long will it take me to get to Columbus?” the answer won’t tell me much about my arrival time in Cleveland. An unanswerable question is sometimes a better heuristic than a solvable one.
The question came to me one day: is it possible to admit to God, to another human being, and NOT to myself? Well, of course not! Don’t be absurd! Ah, but what did the man say? “I believe because it is absurd.” I was unable to toss away the question without regard.
I had an experience that caused the question to remain with me. I had reached a point in my recovery and in the Fellowship where admitting my fault to another person had become, essentially, routine. On one occasion, I walked away from a conversation with the distinct feeling that my wrong which I had just shared with another person, I had not yet admitted to myself, let alone “God.” (Neither was it “the exact nature,” but that is another subject.)
If you’ve ever been talking with someone and said something that struck you as an entirely new idea, something that you had never really considered until that moment you spoke it, you have a grasp of the process my thinking went through, then.
Since that encounter, I’ve been convinced there’s something worthwhile in separately naming ourselves in addition to the externals, God and another human being.
[We] Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
This Step moves from indirect to direct object. What are “we admitting”? At this point, we reach one of the more defining phrases in all the Steps: “the exact nature of our wrongs.” Not merely our wrongs, nor even the nature of our wrongs, but the exact nature of our wrongs.
What our “wrongs” are is the subject of the preceding Step concerning morals, since a wrong is “not in accordance with what is morally right or good.” Whatever could possibly be the nature of something “not in accordance with what is morally right or good?” How can it be broken down any further than simply right or wrong?
Nature is “the inherent character or basic constitution of a person or thing;” its essence.
Exact is “exhibiting or marked by strict, particular, and complete accordance with fact or a standard; marked by thorough consideration or minute measurement of small factual details.”
Exact nature pushes this description past the bounds of simply “admitted our wrongs,” and seemingly beyond judgment of right or wrong as final. Perhaps, it leads away from blind reductionism and may well guide the practitioner to more than a recitation of harms done, or the simple admission of guilt, error, culpability, on the order of: “I did this thing; it was wrong. What’s next?”
This peculiar phrase begs questions like: Why are these wrongs? Why are they still wrongs, now? What makes them wrongs for you? For others? Precisely why were they, are they, wrongs for you or others? What is their exact nature?
This Step—as written—is not, as some would have it, a recitation of one’s life story, or just those memorable incidents where one behaved badly or with evil intent, nor is it the drawing up of some moral equivalent of a financial statement. If one is unable to “come to terms” with the exact nature of one’s wrongs, this Step is incomplete.