Read a paper once that explained how the location of our solar system in one of the arms of the Milky Way was in pretty much the “sweet spot” for the possibility of life on Earth.
For stars located too close to the center of the galaxy, with a relatively heavy population of stars, the occurrence of nearby supernova is too common (even if only a couple of times every million years) to allow the evolution of living systems.
For stars located too far out on the spiral arms, nearby supernovae are too rare to allow the accumulation of significant amounts of elements higher in atomic number than iron - and a variety of those elements are absolute requirements for the kind of living systems found on Earth.
But if you’re in exactly the right location - and their hypothesis was we are - you get just the right occurrence of nearby supernovae to allow the incredbiy long period of time it takes to get to sentient creatures.
Yes, almost as if it was ‘planned’...............................