Why are some people born beautiful and intelligent into this life, while some others are born with terminal diseases and terrible deformities?

Why are some people born beautiful and intelligent into this life, while some others are born with terminal diseases and terrible deformities?

Just a thought to get you thinkin'.

I think that it must be because of something that we've done in a previous life/previous lives. In fact, this hypothetical question, along with its implications, is the best complete proof of reincarnation/multiple lifetimes that I can think of.

I do not believe in an immediate reincarnation. I believe in a metaphysical reincarnation. I believe our souls must pass through a cycle of eternity before they can be born again. 

Eternity must be a cycle, as far as I can see it. It can't just be a line that extends indefinitely into both the past and the future, nor can it just be a finite line. That would just be too clumsy. God has designed everything in the most beautiful form conceivable. Nature partakes of cycles. If eternity's a cycle, it partakes of both the finite and the infinite. Everything in nature has a shape, and more often than not, that shape hints at a cycle. 

Therefore, if time comes around again and again, we have a time to be born at each cycle of eternity. And that is precisely when we are born. We are doing things in this life that will affect our future lives positively or adversely. And our previous lives will eventually become our future lives!

Because everything comes around in a circle.

My vision of all time is a globe.  

Each cycle of eternity is like one traverse of the globe, from, say, -26° latitude by 28° longitude (which happens to be at Johannesburg, South Africa, on the globe we call our planet, 'Earth'), back to -26° latitude by 28° longitude. Of course you could start from any other point in time. As you make decisions in your life, you are steering yourself left or right as you traverse the globe that is time. I haven't quite figured out what would happen if you steered yourself wildly left, for example, and (assuming you're moving roughly north on the globe) wound up at, say, -26° latitude by 13° longitude, as opposed to 28° longitude. I guess as long as you make one complete cycle around the globe. Nor have I figured out if you are always moving in the same approximate direction (like north)- or, rather, how far you can lean northwest or northeast before you can't go any more into that direction. One thing I am pretty sure of, though, is that you will always be moving in the same general direction (like north as opposed to south), as time only moves in one direction- from the past into the future, and never the other way around. 

I'm pretty sure we can do anything to our lives to make them better, or worse. We can always move up, or down, in terms of the general quality of our lives. 'How are you doing?' is a question with metaphysical implications. Once we're on a good path, though, we can stay on that path. What is important to understand is that our Lives contain every possibility. But if we want to avoid the nadir of suffering that's the characteristic of one part of the globe, we can always steer clear of that part of the globe by making the right decisions, the best decisions possible. 

Every possibility is already in the cards. Everything we have ever done, ever will do, and could ever possibly do is already sitting somewhere there on the globe, just like every possible outcome is present in the programing of a video game despite how often you actually get to that part of the video game.

If you're not in a good part of your life right now, just have faith that you can be if you are patient, and continue to make the best possible choices. But one thing that pisses me off is when someone says something like 'I wish I could just disappear,' or 'I can't wait to get to heaven, so that all of my earthly suffering will be done forever,' or that they're gonna commit suicide so that they can end their suffering forever, because none of these statements is realistic. Another statement that pisses me off is, 'It's good to be alive!' because you will never know anything but life. Mark Twain said he didn't fear death because he'd spent the past few billion years dead, and hadn't suffered the slightest inconvenience from it. One of my favorite phrases is, 'When you're dead, you're just dead' —William S. Burroughs. Life on earth is all we get, but it just keeps on comin' around again, and again. There is no escaping life, there is no awareness in death. You can never disappear, and to wish to do so is unrealistically nihilistic. You're just shooting yourself in the foot to say something like that. Heaven and hell are a cop-out; there are no such things. Life on earth is all we get, like I said. But to say that life is finite is a mistake, too. There is no such thing as a perfect, painless existence in heaven, or eternal torment for your enemies, in hell. Either nothing is perfect or everything is perfect, it's your choice how you want to look at things. But it's my belief that life, with all its pains and imperfections, is actually perfect.  There is no way to get out of it. You mi'aswell make the best of the things you've got. Heaven and hell are just names we can give to our existence here on Earth. And, in the grand scheme of things, suicide is no escape! You are only coming back again for another life. Maybe you can improve your situation by committing suicide, if it's really the pits! But like Kahlil Gibran said in The Prophet, 'A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me.' If you just want to escape your current suffering temporarily, then suicide may be the answer, but you will never escape life itself. You may be dead for an eon, but you won't be aware to appreciate your unawareness. And then you'll come back for another life, better, or worse off, for your decision. 

That's just the way it is.

You must have earned what you were born into. You must have deserved it. It wasn't just luck, and it wasn't just random. Therefore it must have been due to the decisions that you made in your previous life/your previous lives. That's why some people are born beautiful and intelligent into this life, while some others are born with terminal diseases and terrible deformities.

—Note: this writing is a little out of date; for example, now I believe that the past, present, and future all inter-influence each other. What has happened or is happening may be caused by something in the future.