A little of both.
First, I am talking about _technological_ life. There might be some bacteria, even in our own solar system - life, but little chance of building space ships.
The Drake equation addresses the probability of technological life, and again, it concludes, generously, a 1/100th of a chance per spiral galaxy of having one planet capable of supporting technological life.
Then, when you add contact and travel limitations on top of that...
Was Drake able to explain infinity? Technologicaly speaking I think we are like babes in a crib, we realy do not have an understanding of the universe, that doesn’t mean some other life form doesn’t. So far we have approached space travel like Europeans approached traveling by sea. When all you know how to do is build a boat the only thing you can do is float.
Check out Stanton Friedman’s shredding of the Drake equation.
The Drake equation is great for playing "what if". But many of it's terms are little more than onager heuristic estimates (wild ass guesses). Consider just one, the fraction of stars that have planets. The estimate for that one has been steadily growing over the past decade or two.
Agree about the distances though, unless one of us (civilizations) can break the light speed barrier somehow, and figure that is the reason *they* aren't here.
It's also possible that they are waiting for us, that is they are behind us technologically, which gets to a couple of other factors in the Drake equation. How long to develop a technological civilization, and how long such civilizations last before blowing themselves up (or otherwise destroying themselves).