If only three ants lived on planet earth, one in the Americas, one in Japan, and one in Africa, they would each be effectively alone.
We may have the same predicament in regard to other life in the universe. It may very well exist, but be so far away that it just doesn’t matter.
Stars are ~8 light years apart from each other. Unless physics allows us to increase the speed of a spacecraft by multiple magnitudes, we are looking at 36,000 years to cover the distance from just one star to another.
“If only three ants lived on planet earth, one in the Americas, one in Japan, and one in Africa, they would each be effectively alone.”
Please read post 56 on the fermi paradox. In your example, if each ant lives for 50 million years, it would have plenty of time to walk every inch of the globe and make contact with the other two ants.