Since we're looking at objects billions of light years away, we're looking billions of years into the past. In the context of extragalactic life, it's a bit sad to me that even if we somehow spotted it at those insane distances, in the early versions of those galaxies we see, odds are that it'll be gone by now, and we'll likely be gone by the time any lucky photons born in our solar system can reach those places, too. Even so, it's cool to think that the odds of life being out there somewhere in a universe so vast are really quite good, inaccessible as it may be.