We don't need to find a particular grain of sand, we just need to find a grain of sand that's a particular shape or color. How rare such grains are is the big question. Everything we know tells us that they should be everywhere, but they aren't.
We can see for 93^h^h47 billion light years in all directions. That's a pretty big ball-o-space. Plenty to observe.
And if we find ETI, even at distances that preclude ever interacting with them, it will still be the most amazing thing to ever happen in all of human history.
They are millions of light years away, but there is no absolute time frame in which our observations could be called "old" or "new". You can choose to think of far away things as "the past", if you like. But the point is, that doesn't make it any less cool.
EDIT: Actually, I missed your point, which was that far away things have less history in which intelligence could evolve. This is true, but the amount of history we can observe is still staggeringly large. Far too big to eliminate the paradox.
We can see for 93^h^h47 billion light years in all directions. That's a pretty big ball-o-space. Plenty to observe.
And if we find ETI, even at distances that preclude ever interacting with them, it will still be the most amazing thing to ever happen in all of human history.