“What a waste!” We hate it when potential has been ruined. The Torah has a word for it: neveilah.
The word is first used by G-d in his plans to deal with the builders of the Tower of Babel: Let us, then, go down and neveilah their speech there, so that they shall not understand one another’s speech.”
The people are irrevocably blocked from building their tower, and all their work is for naught. G-d lays waste to their ability to communicate.
The word is more commonly used to refer to an animal that has died in a manner (e.g. disease, predator, etc.) that renders it unfit for human consumption (according to the laws of the Torah). Kosher meat elevates the both man, animal, and the earth (which is why blood must be sent back to the earth). Wasted life is a wasted opportunity for spiritual elevation.
Animals that are identified as neveilah are not useable as food:
Or when a person touches any [spiritually blocked] thing (be it the neveilah of an impure beast or the neveilah of impure cattle or the neveilah of an impure creeping thing) … blocked from spiritual elevation, that person realizes guilt… (L. 5:2) … Fat from animals that are neveilah … you must not eat it. (L. 7:24)
Such an animal cannot be elevated through their death, and they cannot elevate the mind and body of a person. A neveilah is a break in the Reiach Cycle, the flow of spiritual energy from mankind back to the heavens. From a practical Torah perspective, a neveilah is a waste.
(On the other hand, an animal that is killed in an offering or in a kosher manner for food is not neveilah. A kosher animal has, through its death, achieved its highest purpose.)
Describing a person as a neveilah is much worse: Meanwhile Jacob’s sons, having heard the news, came in from the field. The men were distressed and very angry, because he had committed a neveilah in Israel by lying with Jacob’s daughter—a thing not to be done.
Dinah was ruined (her virginity was wasted, similar to Deut 22:21). There is a palpable sense of loss and regret when an entire promising life come down to one single (and awful) event. A neveilah is an event that annihilates potential, the opportunity for spiritual elevation.
If any party is guilty of a capital offense and is put to death, and you string the body on a tree, you must not let the neveilah remain on the tree … (D. 21:23)
A person who has committed murder has wasted his life – a life which could surely have been lived otherwise, with different and better choices and ending. Every time we can elevate ourselves and the world around us, we reach for the heavens. And every time we choose otherwise, the Torah is telling us that we are devastating the opportunities that He has given us.