Yeah i also think the chalenge aint that musch find inhabited worlds but to find inhabited worlds where a civilisation has emerged in the same time as us. That's tricky cause complex life only made it to the civilisation after like 500million years or so.
There obviously is life out there in the cosmos but intelligent life is something else. Considering as you said that civilisations live long enough to colonize other planets, ofc. Maybe they disappear before as the fermi paradox says it