It took several billion years for the stars to form, blow up, and fuse the elements into heavier and heavier elements that then formed our galactic neighbourhoo

It took several billion years for the stars to form, blow up, and fuse the elements into heavier and heavier elements that then formed our galactic neighbourhood, our sun and ultimately Earth. Then it took more than 4.5 billion years for Earth to cool, develop life (or get contaminated, if it was panspermia) and evolve that life to a point where it split the atom and built a planetary communications network that allows ordering pizza from any single point on the planet's surface. I'm certain this process could have been quicker elsewhere, and there's no reason to believe life could not develop under different circumstances, but it's definitely plausible that extra-terrestrial life -- assuming it exists -- is a rare thing and that any alien civilizations may be few and very, very far in-between. On the other hand, the Universe is a rather big place, and even if there's just a single species who reached space in the entire galaxy, that still leaves us with the possibility of life elsewhere. "A long time ago, in a galaxy far away" is quite fitting. Other technological civilizations could have developed, risen and fallen and crumbled into dust while life on Earth was nothing more than a bunch of proteins chilling in a hot spring.