티끌 모아 태산

A blacksmith

What in the world all of a sudden I want to write an entry about this blacksmith?
Well, I was at Korean Folk Village last Friday and took this picture of a blacksmith. As soon as I read the sign that says 대장간 'blacksmith', my head zoomed into the a Korean story about it.
It all started with a proverb that says 티끌 모아 태산 which means 'dust collected into Tae Mountain'-- a  mountain in China that used to  gain such an endearing  and enormous affection from Korean people in the past, for its beauty and mystery(?).
Should I translate it longer, it means that even the seemingly useless dust can be something of greatness when collected through time.
So, the story goes something like this: There used to be 9 year old boy who happened to play at a local blacksmith in his village only to find that he found a piece of chunk of metal to be something of interest. He collected this small piece of chunk every time he passed by the blacksmith that he made his father angry for it meant nothing more than wasting time. He should've studied. On the other hand, his mother--being so understanding of his being a kid--just smiled at him and told him that seemingly useless piece of junk could be of something useful some day.
Time passed.

The blacksmith got bankrupt due to his flaw of reckless behavior.
He became a homeless who had nothing more than just a piece of clothes he put on.

Time went by until the story of a blacksmith turned homeless reached the ears of the boy.

Out of the blue, the seemingly naive boy came up and met the blacksmith and told him that he felt sorry for having collected the small piece of junk all this time. Unknowingly to his innocence, he thought that he was the one who might have caused the blacksmith's failure.

Unknowingly to the boy, the blacksmith-turned-homeless suddenly bent on his knees and swore to the boy that he would never live his life recklessly any longer.
With the boy's collected pieces of junks, the homeless started his life again as a blacksmith.

Thus came an old proverb that says 티끌 모아 태산 'even trivial stuffs can be of great importance when they are collected endearingly over time'