Longing for a world of peace......what you do in times of stress and sadness?

Have you ever wished you could just get away? To get away from life for a short time so you could just breath? Ive been feeling like this lately, things in my life right now, though i know can be worse, is pretty stressful for me, things at home, with my parents, work etc....some days i wake up in the morning and wish i could just go to a distant island somewhere, where it is stress free, blue skies, green land, lush hills, sun shining bright etc....i think of this peaceful place every night before i go to sleep and it saddens me, saddens me because i know that this is just a mere thought, but this thought is so real for me, and one day, soon i hope, i will find a place such as this. Ive always been the type of person that couldnt handle stress, i just cant deal with more than one thing on my plate, stress makes me feel like the walls are closing in all around me, and the room is getting smaller and smaller and it makes me just wanna scream out. Things in my life, in just life in general, seem so casual and plain, so ordinary, and then i step back, look at the big picture, and just realize how screwed up things are in the world, so much hate, famine, pollution, crime, carelessness, war, fighting, destruction etc....it depresses me just to consider myself a human being because i see what people are doing in todays world and i say to myself that im not like them, nothing like them, so how can i be one of them? I just have revelations sometimes, some days i just think real deep and realize how this isnt living, how there's more to life, more to it all, and i want to experience it, i want to live, the true meaning of what is 'life'......so, enough with all this ranting, i want to know what you do to relieve stress in times of sadness, depression, sorrow etc.....what do you do? do you have a happy place or any techniques and routines to clear your mind?