Introspection Inspired by Ad Astra

What if your whole life you were driven by an all-encompassing passion to make contact with extra-terrestrial life? What if you discovered definitive proof that on hundreds of thousands of worlds no life exists whatsoever? How would you react? Would you reach out and embrace the unique miracle of all Earth's life forms? Or would you go insane with despair that our flawed species is the only hope there is, "for," as Carl Sagan so eloquently put it, "the universe to know itself?"

I believe I would do the former, but I fear I might do the latter.

There's nothing here but us.