|all the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players|

We are, indeed.
Do I remember the last time I considered what I wanted before I considered what I should I want? --No.
There is some sort of hilarity in the confusion that results from what we want, what we should want, and what we need. Is life pre-determined? Are we bowing obsequiously before a great audience--society--fumbling and fretting over minutiae that will never matter in the grand scheme of things? What is the grand scheme of things, this "stage" that Shakespeare so eloquently created, or some massive cloud looming over our own imaginations?
I like to think that Shakespeare meant that in our day-to-day lives, we behave in the way that our grand audience--our societies--expect us to on our massive stage--the world. From birth, we enshrine ourselves in our identities of gender--the little girl who plays with her Barbie dolls, the little boy who must play with his train set, when really, we could choose to play with what we would like. We trap ourselves in the maddened illusions of love, in this idea that we must succumb to the folly and the inanity, when really it could be quite a rational, biological thing. We force ourselves into the roles of "friend" and "family," paying our lip service and our sweet smiles, saying that which protects and shelters and damages our "friends" and our "family," hiding our true thoughts so that we may fit into our roles. We might not have any family or friends at all, yet we go on to be those "players" on that "stage," forever acting. Our acting changes as the setting changes--we should never speak of sex in a church, and never of academia in steamy little downtown bar.
And so, who are we--and who are the actors? Are we one?